This is just silly.
Everyone including you and me and the CNN executives know what the answer is. And to say that there is no sense of mission at CNN simply compounds this silliness. Their mission is, was, and I think always will be to promote the liberal one-world socialist agenda. That is the mission. Their natural constituency is that group of people that agree with their extreme liberal viewpoint. That group is in the first place a minority in this country and worse for CNN, most of them don't have cable. They suffer from the the natural demographics that keep people listening to Rush and ignoring the occasional liberal personality that pops up on talk radio. The only reason they are still in the game is that they were there first and it has taken Fox some time to catch up.
The obvious solution that will not be undertaken: become "Fair and Balanced". In my humble opinion, I don't expect to see this happen in my lifetime.