Pekary walked out of MSNBC in 2020, writing on her website that coming from public radio, “where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would “rate” , at cable news “I saw such choices – it’s practically baked in to the editorial process – and those decisions affect news content every day”.

The pressure of making editorial decisions based on polling and audience data, Pekary explains, starts in the morning news meetings – where Zucker was famously an ever-present force at CNN. “That’s why the coverage from hour-to-hour sticks to the same stories and narratives. They make decisions on what they think is going to rate the best, based on what has done well, and to social media.”

Pekary noted recently that in the absence of Donald Trump to drive ratings, CNN had pushed aggressively into “the realm of tabloid-like material”. There was Gabby Petito, the Long Island woman murdered by her boyfriend in Wyoming, and Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.