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Posted on 01/24/2017 10:37:19 AM PST by righttackle44
I'm a former CNN correspondent, and I could answer this question in much greater detail than you'd ever want to read, but I'll give you the short answer. CNN under Ted Turner (no journalist he, but he understood what he wanted CNN to be and what it needed to be) was a place where, when you first walked in the door, you were told "there are no stars here, only news." And the staff believed that. For me, after wandering in the wilderness of local TV news for years, it was a great feeling to join a group of folks who (by and large) only really wanted to do the f**ing news.[)]
I covered AOL as part of my beat (technology), and when the "merger" news hit, I knew it was going to be bad news for CNN. AOL, which was acquiring CNN, was all about acquiring customers, refusing to let them leave, and shaking every coin from their pockets. CNN, on the other hand, had a service culture; we really thought we were doing good in the world, even if at times we felt like we were just a bunch of firefighters hanging around the firehouse, bored, waiting for the alarm to ring so we'd have something important to do. It was going to be a big--a catastrophic--clash of workplace cultures. And it was. Managers started to try to please their new AOL overlords instead of focusing on the basic blocking-and-tackling of newsgathering. CNN started listing. (Wags would insist it was to the left, but that's another discussion; I have some strong views about that, too).
At the same time, Fox News was really starting to kick CNN's butt all over the place. And how were they doing that? Well, some of it was the whole "preaching to the choir" thing, where the audience is really into you because you're telling it what it wants to hear, but Fox's execs also understood that the "anti-Ted" approach (making your anchors the stars INSTEAD of the news, and finding the most charismatic and (sometimes) polarizing anchors out there and encouraging them to say whatever they felt like saying on TV -- that such an approach would make CNN seem boring by comparison.
CNN eventually reacted to this by trying the same strategy--that's what made possible abominations like the hiring of Rick Sanchez and Nancy Grace. (I've said it many times: any network that would employ a person like Nancy Grace doesn't really want to be taken seriously, and shouldn't be). And don't even get me started on Piers Morgan!
(Prior to this era, there were only a couple of CNN reporters who could get away with playing by their own rules: Christiane Amanpour, because she had more balls than any man at CNN, and Candy Crowley, who inexplicably then (as now) could get away with saying any crazy shit--one hundred percent opinion, zero percent objective fact--and get away with it).
Even anchors who are smart and capable (Don Lemon comes to mind) are today allowed (encouraged?) to speak their minds freely during news broadcasts, often with embarrassing results. If I were to watch CNN today (unlikely), I would doubtless soon find myself yelling at the TV: "Stop telling me what you think, and start telling me what you KNOW!" And even the estimable Anderson Cooper is guilty of this (you could, in fact, make the argument that he's the CNN anchor who started it; I can't count the number of times I've been put off by Anderson's efforts to pre-digest the news and "explain" it to me.
Note to news anchors everywhere: nobody thinks you're all that smart. We know you're mostly just reading the words from a TelePrompTer; words that were written by someone brighter than you, probably; in between your Tourette's-like fits of opinionating to make yourself seem interesting to viewers. You know what would make you interesting? If you were credible.
Not to excuse the exec producers and line producers from any responsibility for the debacle that is today's CNN; no, there is also some truly terrible news judgment at play (see Anonymous's astute Flight 370 comments above). But the main reason CNN doesn't work is because it can't remember what it used to be and what it needs to be. I say bring back Ted Turner (who we'd occasionally see in the food court at CNN Center back in the day, wearing a rumpled suit and scuffed brown shoes; a thoroughly approachable and engaging guy) and let him kick some ass. Remind CNNers that their job is to be solid (and, all right, perhaps a little bit boring) until the shit hits the fan -- and then you get going on a big story and cover it like no one else can. Don't like the idea of being solid but boring? Well, how's the alternative working out for ya? Not too well, as it turns out.
So I put this question to CNN's brass: if no one's going to watch your air (and virtually no one is watching your air), wouldn't you rather at least have your integrity intact? Go back to "no stars, just the news" and re-earn the trust you have squandered over the past dozen years. Let the Fox Newses and the Huffington Posts and the MSNBCs of the world fracture the media landscape and pick over the shards. You don't have to do that. You could play it down the middle. You could try as hard to be responsible as you're trying now to be interesting. And you might just succeed at the former, whereas you're failing miserably at the latter.
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nope.
I doubt it ever was. This fake news crap didn’t just start last year.
Any more?
Was it ever?
Eason Jordan credible
I don’t watch SNL any more but now I get my laughs watching CNN and MSNBC . The sheer dismay exhibited is humorous and much better because it is real and not acting .
“Is CNN a credible news source anymore?”
Uh, how about, never was a credible news source?
There is no real news. The whole industry is like freaking junior high school.
Is the Pope Catholic anymore?
Their “news” is credible. But if you watch from 5PM to 11PM you will see 20-30 minutes of “news” (I rarely see outside those hours). The rest of the time is opinion (usually very biased opinion). So every 2-5 minutes news segment is followed by 10-15 minutes of mostly-left bias about what the news means.
Even the selection of which news items to cover and talk about is biased toward how badly they can attack and misrepresent Trump/republicans/conservatives after accurately telling what happened. So at the end of both the news and discussion segments viewers will be left with incorrect opinions. But they’ll tell us the news segment was accurate/credible and the rest was non-news opinion panel.
NO !
As I said a half hour ago when this was first posted on a different thread:
“At times”. Their election night coverage was less biased than Fox News was. John King is a master of the data and I have not seen him deviate from the facts or add spin or opinion. Some of their panelists are great, some suck. At times CNN is a credible news source.
All it would take is management with the Roger Ailes “fair and balanced” mindset to take CNN to #1 ratings.
No, not for a decade.
Nope.
Ted Turner had an agenda from the beginning.
No they’re not.
Given WikiLeaks proved they are the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, nope.
It was all facts from the on site reporter with the CNN anchor providing clarifying facts.
If was great fun for a news junky, while it lasted.
Back in the old days, when Turner actually owned CNN, they were fairly straight up and honest.
Turner is a nutjob, but, he pushed for honesty. I remember an interview he gave to Pat Buchanan, when Buchanan asked him about their disagreements on philosophy. Turner told him that if he ever changed an opinion because he thought Turner would want that, then, Turner would fire him.
They also had the Prince of Darkness: Bob Novak.
It’s only been in the last 15 years or so that CNN went dark. OH about when Time-Warner took over.
CNN was renamed “Clinton News Network” back when bill was running for president.
It’s been a biased cesspool for far longer than a dozen years.
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