Gaslighting is Merriam-Webster’s 2022 Word of the Year. It’s easy to see why. People must be looking that word up all day long. It’s impossible to follow current events or basic news coverage and not be smacked in the face by someone doing a little gaslighting.

Gaslighting: psychological manipulation of a person usually fover an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator. That is the definition recorded by Merriam-Webster. You can understand how just listening to cable news hosts might lead to a viewer pondering just how much gaslighting is going on.

The second entry for gaslighting is: the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage. That’s a little more concise and easier to understand. Take, for example, CNN’s Don Lemon and his interview with late night show host Stephen Colbert. Two liberal guys talking about CNN. In a question that Colbert asked Lemon, he asked if it is now forbidden for the network to be liberal, taking into account CNN’s new top man, Chris Licht. Lemon’s answer was classic gaslighting. What? Liberal? “I don’t think we ever were liberal,” Lemon responded. Really?

I mean, even the super-liberal Colbert was stunned by Lemon’s response. “What?” Colbert shockingly reacted. “That’s not me saying that, that’s the people out there saying he’s not letting you be liberal anymore.”

“Well listen, I think what Chris is saying is that he wants Republicans – sensible Republicans, he wants us to hold people to account, but he wants people to come on and feel comfortable with coming on and talking on CNN and appearing on CNN,” Lemon said. “So if you invite someone to your house, you want to make them comfortable but also by the nature of what we do, we have to hold people to account.”

“And so that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going liberal or conservative or whatever, it just means that we are doing what we do and that’s good journalism,” Lemon added.

“So accountable but not confrontational,” Colbert said.

“I think sometimes one must be confrontational,” the CNN host pushed back. “Look, I don’t think that a conversation on television should be any different than a conversation in person. Listen, I have confrontational conversations with people I love and I have unconformable conversations with people I love and I think it’s necessary. And I think it’s also necessary to do that on television, on CNN, but you can do that without being vitriolic. I think not being vitriolic is maybe a better way of putting it, but you can do that and not have vitriol. As people say, you can disagree without being disagreeable. And so I think that’s what our mission is.”

Did you catch that? “Sensible Republicans”, Lemon says. Who decides who is sensible and who is not, Don? Liberals? Liberals at CNN? How generous that Lemon understands that there is a good portion of the television viewing audience that may not think as he does. The whole reason that CNN is being revamped, allegedly, and weeding out some of the liberally deranged hosts and contributors is because CNN has gone so hopelessly off the cliff. My Lord, during the Trump years it was one hysterical interview after another, with the world coming to an end at any time. It would have been amusing and entertaining if it was not so seriously alarming that CNN was still trying to pass as a news organization.

Let’s be honest – the only “sensible Republican” is a Never-Trump Republican who will sign a contract with CNN and regularly sit on panels and trash Trump and other Republicans. Better yet, Republicans who used to work for Trump or at the White House and now are cashing in with anti-Trump chatter. How principled. Conserving conservatism, I’m told.

Most Republicans or conservatives, or whatever label you choose to use, don’t wish to have the likes of Don Lemon or others on CNN define them. CNN’s ratings are in the gutter. Most people who watch cable news channels kicked CNN to the curb a long time ago.

The new man in charge, Chris Licht, wants the network to move toward the political middle and away from the far left/progressive coverage that has defined CNN for the last, well, at least a decade, probably longer. He’s made a little progress by getting rid of Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, Jeffrey Toobin and John Harwood. None of those people even pretended to be non-partisan professionals, especially during the Trump years. Trump broke a lot of people, even people who liked him up until he put an R behind his name and ran for president.

It’s being reported that big lay-offs are coming as Licht tries to bring the network back to what it once was. Back in the day, when CNN was the only cable news network and Ted Turner made television history with it, news coverage was much more palatable for conservative viewers. Sure, television news shows usually leaned left but it was never so far left and in-your-face as it is now. Now Licht has to figure out how to make the necessary changes.

Welcome to the painful cable news reset of late 2022, a TV drama freighted with questions about democracy, bias and the role of commercial journalism in what is supposed to a post-Donald Trump realignment of values – a premise that may itself be premature given the former US president is running for the White House again.

Over the past year, incoming management at CNN outlined a course to return to a political middle ground and to the spirit of founder Ted Turner, who sought to “make news the star”. The course would be steered by CNN’s chairman and CEO, Chris Licht, and supported by Warner’s chief executive, David Zaslav, and libertarian cable king and shareholder John Malone.

“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone said last year. That seemed to conform to what public polls indicate many viewers claim to want – unbiased news. But few can agree on what that looks like or if it exists. Nor is it clear they would tune in if it did.

Lemon himself was changed from solo nighttime show host to one of three hosts on CNN’s early morning show. The trio seems like an awkward fit for now but maybe they’ll settle in and work better together. Just an observation.

Licht, a former late night showrunner for Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, has his work cut out for him. He doesn’t want CNN to turn into vanilla, non-descript news channel. I don’t think he has to worry about that.

Update/Correction (Ed): An inaccurate reference to Jake Tapper has been removed.