This is the true story…of two strangers… picked to work together… and have their lives taped…to find out what happens… when people stop being polite…and start getting real.
A version of those lines, read every week during the opening of MTV’s durable reality show “The Real World,” might not seem so out of place at CNN’s cantankerous panel show “NewsNight.” The series finds itself in the spotlight for something its producers have tried not to feature: a profanity-laced threat made by one of its guests against another.
Scott Jennings, the conservative CNN analyst who appears regularly on the 10 p.m. program and often serves as a foil for many of its guests as well as host Abby Phillip, on Thursday night told guest Adam Mockler to “get your f—ing hand out of my face” as the young liberal gesticulated about Jennings’ stance on the current U.S. conflict with Iran.
“No, everybody, calm down. OK?” Philip cautioned the pair. And, to Jennings: “We’re having a debate. You can respond to the points that he’s making.”
A CNN spokesperson did not respond to a query seeking comment.
The rising temperatures became noticeable. “Flashback to the war the skinheads had at my studio,” said Geraldo Rivera, another Thursday-night guest, making reference to a 1988 incident on the set of his syndicated “Geraldo” during which white supremacists got into an on-stage altercation with activists. Rivera’s nose was broken by a flying chair. It may not be lost on CNN that Rivera was nodding to another period of heightened emotion TV, one presented by daytime hosts like Jenny Jones, Ricki Lake and Sally Jessy Raphael.
While Phillip is charged with moderating a panel that can in some segments total as many as five different people — many of them hailing from the worlds of podcasting and influencers — she has frequently worked as a sort of verbal traffic cop. “People should know that I’m always trying to make sure that if I hear something that isn’t right and I know something isn’t right, I’m going to say something about it,” she told Variety in September of 2024.
Panelists clearly are told to listen to her. Phillip rarely allows any temper to show, and guests generally don’t challenge her when she refutes a line of argument with facts CNN has reported. “I don’t think that’s helpful for an audience for me to add to the cacophony of sound.” she said in the past interview.
But they do challenge one another. On Tuesday night, journalist Sarah Ellison, formerly of The Washington Post, was seen telling conservative podcaster Ben Ferguson that his grip on the fact of the discussion at hand were tenuous, but in more direct language. Many of the show’s panelists are pundits or partisans (sometimes both), not professional journalists (though sometimes the show’s “fifth seat” is given to a reporter or expert).
The formula has worked well. “NewsNight” is often CNN’s most-watched show among audiences that matter, people between 25 and 54. That’s the crowd advertisers in news programming see as most likely to heed marketing messages and product pitches. Phillip also moderates a similar weekend program on CNN called “Table for Five.”
The program’s existence shows CNN eager to court younger crowds, says Ben Bogardus, chairman of the journalism program at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. To engage with those viewers, he says, the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet needs content that is likely to go viral on social media and get picked up by both conservatives and liberals. The network seems like it is trying to “court a younger demographic who wouldn’t normally” see the show, he says, “because they don’t flip through channels.”
Other well-known news programs have grappled with strife among panelists. Such stuff became more notable during the coronavirus pandemic, when remote production kept teams apart from one another, and kept them from hashing out differences in person.
In 2021, clips from Fox News Channel’s “The Five” featuring co-host Greg Gutfeld yelling at panelist Juan Williams often went viral. Ultimately, Williams would leave the program, citing a desire to stay near his family in Washington, D.C. rather than return to the show’s New York City studio. ABC’s “The View” also saw more arguments as co-hosts like Megan McCain and Whoopi Goldberg bickered from on-screen video boxes, rather than being able to cool temperatures during commercial breaks.
There may be more appetite for reality-show antics in news. Executives may “look at this and say, if it gets us to an audience that traditionally wouldn’t watch us, then maybe you can put up with a little bit of heightened drama and intensity,” says Bogardus. Traditional news purveyors are “throwing things at the wall to see what attracts” a young audience that has been splintered by digital media offerings and has become “very fragmented.”
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