CNN’s Trump debacle suggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016

Network's own reporters criticise decision to give ex-president platform in town hall' format that allowed him to spout freely

Donald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president's hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a town hall" with Republican voters, was a triumph.

America was served very well by what we did last night," CNN's chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network's daily news conference the following morning.