Former NCS host Don Lemon launched a scathing critique of the media institution, arguing that legacy networks allow right-wing ideologues, suppress liberals like himself and systematically reward unqualified White males with immense company energy.
Lemon’s remarks got here in a Substack piece printed forward of Thursday night time’s closing broadcast of CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” CBS introduced final yr that it might be canceling the late-night establishment after a 33-year franchise run, citing steep monetary headwinds dealing with conventional community tv.
In his essay, headlined, “Don’t cry for Stephen Colbert. Cry for the First Amendment,” Lemon tied the top of Colbert’s show to his personal tumultuous exit from NCS and his present high-profile authorized battles. Lemon is at the moment combating federal civil rights fees and a civil lawsuit after he livestreamed far-left activists disrupting a Sunday service at a Minnesota church in January.
“The networks didn’t like me asking conservatives hard questions,” Lemon wrote. “NCS didn’t like the mirror I was holding up every night. So they pushed me out. And I thought: if it happened to me, it will happen to others. It will trickle down. Or up. Depending on how you look at it.”
Commentator Don Lemon argued that the fashionable legacy media trade, from speak exhibits to cable information, tends to promote unqualified White males who one way or the other fail upward into highly effective positions.
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While Lemon praised Colbert’s expertise, he argued that the company buildings governing cable information and late-night tv share a typical denominator: defending a particular class of executives. Lemon aimed his hearth at an unnamed government — showing to reference former NCS CEO and “Late Show” government producer Chris Licht.
“The world that produced ‘The Late Show,’ the world of legacy media, cable news, and network television, has long had a problem nobody wanted to name out loud,” Lemon wrote. “It is a world that has been extraordinarily good to a very specific kind of person. White men who fail spectacularly and are promoted for it.”
He added, “White men who make catastrophic decisions and are handed bigger offices for it. White men who are visibly, demonstrably unqualified and are given more power anyway. I have watched it for thirty years. I have been managed by it. I have been undone by it.”
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Lemon highlighted the direct hyperlink between his profession downfall and the late-night world, mentioning how the manager producer who ran Colbert’s show for years later grew to become his boss at NCS — and in the end fired him.
“I won’t name him. I don’t need to. But I will say this: it was one of the most spectacular examples of a White man failing up that I have witnessed in this industry,” Lemon claimed, calling the manager “profoundly unqualified” and “visibly incompetent.”
He additional questioned whether or not poor company management, quite than simply altering viewer habits, accelerated the demise of Colbert’s program. “Maybe losing tens of millions of dollars a year wasn’t just about the economics of late night. Maybe it was about who was running the building,” he added.
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Even as he warned that free speech is beneath assault, Don Lemon lamented that journalists “are being forced to make room for right-wing extremists on their platforms.”
Lemon urged his readers not to fear about Colbert’s private future, noting that the comic will thrive in his subsequent chapter. Instead, Lemon used the second to sound the alarm on what he characterizes as an assault on journalistic freedom, whereas concurrently slamming legacy networks for granting airtime to conservative figures.
“Cry for the First Amendment,” Lemon warned. “Cry for the journalists who are being forced to make room for right-wing extremists on their platforms. People who come on television only to lie, deny, and mislead.”
Fox News Digital reached out to NCS for remark relating to Lemon’s remarks however didn’t obtain an rapid response.
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Fox News’ Brian Flood contributed to this report.
Original article supply: Don Lemon claims an unqualified White man ‘failed up’ from Colbert’s show to NCS and then fired him