The decline and fall of CNN

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Ted Turner, a true visionary who’s also a true kook, founded the Cable News Network in 1980. People said he was crazy; there wasn’t enough news in the world to justify a 24/7 television news network.

CNN sputtered along through the 1980s. Finally, the first Gulf War in 1991 gave them a breakthrough. People sat hypnotized in front of their TVs and watched the live coverage from Iraq and Kuwait: Wolf Blitzer, Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett, Christiane Amanpour. I remember sitting mesmerized in front of a friend’s television myself (I didn’t have cable in those days).

Then cable became common. Then it became almost universal. Then it became almost necessary.

Then CNN found that it was competing with Fox and other news networks, which were using the formula CNN had itself created: reporting, reporting on the reporting, experts. It is hard to fill up twenty-four hours a day with news, so you come up with other stuff – let’s be charitable and call it “commentary” – and pretend that your "commentary" is news too.

Let’s fast forward to the present day, shall we?

On the morning of the fourth of July, Partner and I happened to be watching CNN, and I suddenly realized that they were running a promo for the return of “Crossfire.”

“Crossfire”! This was a point-counterpoint program with Tucker Carlson maybe ten years ago, which got shamed off the air by Jon Stewart, who pointed out that they were accomplishing nothing except filling time. 

Now they’re bringing it back.

Okay. Back to CNN. They’re doing a piece on the New England Patriots player, Aaron Hernandez, who killed some people. First, the anchor garbles the words “New England Patriots” into something incomprehensible, and stares silently into the camera for a long moment until she recovers control of her voice. Now we go to the story. CNN has a reporter on the scene in Attleboro, Massachusetts; a neighbor is leading her around the crime scene, explaining things to her. How the hell does this guy know anything? Best of all, the neighbor is introduced this way: “This is Jay. He asked that we not use his last name.”

Hi, Jay. We can see your face. If we really meant to do you harm, we probably wouldn’t need to know your last name.

But don’t blame poor Jay in Attleboro. Blame the CNN reporter who said, “Uh, sure, if you don’t want to use your last name, you don’t have to. But of course you can appear on camera.”

Isn’t CNN hiring anyone with any expertise in journalism?

Evidently not.

But journalism is no longer in demand.

You gotta fill up those twenty-four hours a day with something!

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Howard Kurtz

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I have been a semi-regular viewer of a Sunday morning CNN show called “Reliable Sources.” Its topic is not so much the news itself as the way news is covered. Its participants, led by journalist / moderator Howard Kurtz, discuss tone, and thoroughness of coverage, and whether one story is being overdone while others are being forgotten. The show is generally merciless when it comes to bad journalism; you can argue legitimately over how many minutes to give a news story, but there’s generally no argument that a bad story – unchecked, inaccurate – is bad journalism perpetrated by bad journalists.

I was startled this last Sunday morning to see Howard Kurtz himself sweating under the lights on his own show.

The story goes like this: Kurtz published a story in which he accused Jason Collins (the pro basketball player who just came out as gay) of covering up the fact that he’d been engaged to a woman. This was false; Collins had mentioned the engagement right up front. When Kurtz was called on this, he grudgingly acknowledged his error, but claimed that Collins hadn’t talked about it very much, which was also untrue. End result: Kurtz has now left two of his jobs, at the Daily Beast and at Newsweek.

Where to begin?:

-         Kurtz got the story wrong, and obviously didn’t bother to fact-check himself. The Collins interview wasn’t all that lengthy, so he must have given it the most cursory read possible. He would have crucified any other journalist who did this.

-         He claimed that Collins’s “plotline” had been “muddied” by the fact that he’d had a relationship with a woman. Plotline? Life don’t got no plotline.

-         He seemed startled and outraged that a gay man might be involved with a woman, as if this threw doubt on Collins’s whole story.

-         Apparently he’s made several other slips over the past year or two, mostly involving misattribution of quotations. He attributes all of his slips to working too hard. Also, according to him, everyone knows how much he’s always believed in the ideals of good journalism.

-         He has for the past few years been working for his own news outlet, the Daily Download. His business partner Lauren Ashford has been a guest on “Reliable Sources” on several occasions, but he has never disclosed their business relationship on the show.

Well, he was in full Mea Culpa mode on Sunday. Some of the questions being thrown at him were pretty harsh, but his answers were incredibly ingenuous – as in “working too hard” and “always been devoted to good journalism.”

Ecch.

Mistah Kurtz, he dead.

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A world of opportunity

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While in France, we were stuck (of course) with French TV. This is not so bad: they have game shows, and variety shows, and talk shows, and comedies, and dramas.

 

 

 

Since neither my nor Partner’s French is completely fluent, however, we pretty much stuck to CNN.

 

 

 

The news was – odd. They do a strange mélange overseas: American stories (GIANT EYEBALL FOUND ON FLORIDA BEACH!) to global-interest stories (the saxophone industry in Taiwan, for example).

 

 

 

(I’m not kidding. They did a story on the saxophone industry in Taiwan. We saw it at least six times, on six different days.)

 

 

 

All this is fine. But what really captured my attention were the commercials.

 

 

 

No more commercials for The Scooter Store or the Jitterbug! These were commercials for countries.

 

 

 

For example: every ten minutes (it seemed), CNN / France showed an edited version of this video, which portrays “the unforgettable energy of freedom” in the nation of Georgia. Behold!:

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I like the music, and the dancing. I was not, however, aware that there were Georgian Ninjas.)

 

 

 

Speaking of former USSR republics, here’s Azerbaijan:

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of factories and oil wells and fast cars, and a decent-looking restaurant. Okay! I will definitely build my saccharin factory there!

 

 

 

Many other countries were represented. There was a Taiwanese ad with a nice-looking man doing Chinese calligraphy with a mop. There was Kazakhstan (not so memorable). There was Morocco (all factories and factory workers, but with a nice Moroccan-music background). There was Montenegro (part tourism, part business).

 

 

 

But I will leave you with my very favorite, for eastern Poland.

 

 

 

And I ask you: why haven’t you invested in eastern Poland?

 

 

 

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Rick Rick Rick!

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In Graham Greene's novel Travels with My Aunt, the narrator meets his aunt Augusta's “man” Wordsworth through the intercom at the door, and Wordsworth is very rude to him. Later, face to face, Wordsworth is wonderfully friendly. He laughingly apologizes for his rudeness over the intercom. “That little box makes me want to say things,” Wordsworth says.

 

Wordsworth's problem is everywhere these days. Rick Sanchez is its latest victim. I'm not sure if the little box in this case is radio or TV, but either way, it made him want to say things, and he went ahead and said them.

 

I've seen his show a few times, and I thought he was okay. He appeared to be the kind of open-minded back-and-forth anchor I like, and I didn't feel threatened by his show. He was a little on the show-biz side – loud and boisterous – but who minds a bit of that? He looked big and jovial and almost-handsome, which I tend to favor in a newsman.

 

To be fair, he was doing a Keith Olbermann. He was doing news/commentary,with a heavy helping of editorializing on the side.

 

But I certainly never heard him say anything outrageous.

 

Well, he went and did it. He went on the radio, and he began to rant about the management of CNN, which he darkly hinted was full of . . . Jews. Hispanic-hating Jews. (Rick's Cuban-American, by the way.) He claimed that he'd been held back in his career, relegated to a second-rate status, because his bosses didn't think he could do anchor work effectively. Evidently one of them invoked another Hispanic journalist, Jon Quinones, which Sanchez found outrageous. (Without thinking about it too much, I was able to come up with another fairly well-known Hispanic journalist: Geraldo Rivera. Looking him up to make sure, I was surprised to see that Geraldo is half Puerto Rican and half Jewish. Did you know that? The world is far more complex than I thought.)

 

When it was pointed out to Rick that Jews were a minority too, he scoffed. His point seemed to be that they were not a disadvantaged minority.

 

And then he turned on Jon Stewart.

 

I ask you!

 

First he called Stewart a “bigot.” Then he retracted that and said that “The Daily Show” was “prejudicial.” (I'm not crazy about his use of that word. It bothers me when journalists use words sloppily.) His point seemed to be that Jon Stewart is too liberal.

 

I confess I don't watch “The Daily Show” anymore. I love Stewart, I would marry him if I could, he's adorable. But I just don't find political humor funny anymore. It's like making jokes about the death of your family. Things are dire, folks, and I do not enjoy giggling about this stuff. But Stewart is smart and makes excellent points; he says things that I wish I'd said. He is also far quicker than I am, and far more fearless.

 

Does he have overt political leanings? Oh, yes.

 

Is he a journalist? No.

 

Sanchez fell into the same trap that Bill O'Reilly fell into. He challenged Stewart for being biased toward the liberal agenda.

 

Christ, Rick. That's the same as challenging the Smothers Brothers for being biased toward the liberal agenda.

 

Journalists, I think, feel limited by their profession. They must, by their own terms, be neutral. Commentary must be marked as such. They must be fair.

 

But what fun is that?

 

They see the commentators, the blogosphere, the parodists, have a wonderful time out here, spinning and japing at one another. And they want to get in on the act.

 

The best journalists manage to avoid the temptation.

 

The rest of them . . .

 

Well, ahem.

 

Anyway, Rick has been terminated at CNN. This was harsh. I suspect that some will see this as punishment for calling a spade a spade: if you call out the bosses, the bosses will get rid of you.

 

Well, he called out the bosses, all right.

 

I'm sure he will have a career.

 

How long do you suppose it'll be before he shows up on the Fox News Channel?

 

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