Here is what a gut check has always meant to me, millions of other people and to Merriam-Webster since 1972:

-n. a test or assessment of courage, character, or determination

Here is what CNN’s marketing department wants to make it:

–n.a pause to assess the state, progress or condition of the political news cycle

source: CNN’s Gut Check – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs.

Reviewing stock prices and focus grouped, carefully parsed attack lines from the campaigns from candidates at 5 p.m. every day doesn’t have any inherent news value or relate to guts.

It’s not even a pause because “something” has to be written every day at 5pm even though nothing has actually been said of real import. Basically they are trying to create a target for campaigns to dump spin on them daily at 5 p.m. so they can launder it as newsworthy.