A requiem for CNN. Media mavens take note.

Cleita

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Mon Oct-18-04 04:08 PM
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A requiem for CNN. Media mavens take note.

Ladies and gentlemen and all those news junkies, who value quality journalism, we are gathered here today to bury the Cable News Network or CNN. We all know that CBS has been touted as the Tiffany of television networks and at one time we could have referred to CNN as the Tiffany of cable news channels. But unfortunately for us, thieves came in disguised as purveyors of the fourth estate, and while no one was looking they robbed the jewels of journalism and replaced them with phony paste imitations after stabbing CNN in the back while it was napping.

All those who once had the ability in their busy lives to turn on the TV anytime of the day to pick up the latest current events and breaking news scratched their heads while the robbery took place under their noses. While they wondered why their news channel was spewing propaganda and stories of tabloid sleaziness, CNN was slowly dying of the wounds inflicted on it. While its life force ebbed, the robbers were plucking the jewels gem by gem, as true reporters, journalists and writers were plucked out slowly but surely, and replaced with fake imitations.

I believe the last life breath of truth was breathed by CNN in the recent Crossfire appearance of Jon Stewart, who will no doubt never be invited anywhere near CNN again except maybe occasionally on Larry King, whom he seems to have some kind of rapport with. But then Larry is only fluff in the long run and does anyone watch him on a regular basis?

The body is now dead as a bastion of journalism and the undertakers have taken the corpse, put too much make-up and fake jewelry on it and propped it up in the coffin trying to squeeze one more ounce of rating’s blood from it.

Ted Turner built CNN from the bottom up as a serious cable news channel that was supposed to uphold journalistic principles for unbiased reporting and various show formats that would present both sides of an issue. In a debate format like Crossfire, there was actually supposed to be a real debate. Turner made an effort to show what was going on around the world even when we weren't that interested.

For god's sake I saw Anwar Sadat http://www.ibiblio.org/sullivan/bios/Sadat-bio.html being assassinated right there on TV when it actually happened because I had gotten up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and I turned on CNN. They were showing a military review commemorating the 1973 crossing of the Suez live that Sadat was officiating over when the assassin shot him. Footage was later edited to not show as much of the blood and Sadat's face as it happened, but the fact is it was shown and CNN usually tried to show events around the world as they were happening, no matter what time of the day or night it was.

Nowadays notice that other than a couple of regularly scheduled political propaganda shows, breaking news disappears on the weekends. If there is news you won’t hear about it until Monday and if it isn’t favorable to the right wing, you may not hear about it at all or maybe buried somewhere in a news broadcast, but not repeated very often. I mean what is happening at Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, and Congress? Not a hell of a lot, it seems if you are watching CNN and if you are watching late at night or on weekends…. nothing!

The present executive management of CNN has used its once sterling reputation to spread right wing propaganda, and talk show type of entertainment that at its base was born from “The Wally George Show” http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/wallygeorge1.html as news. Many of us figured out during the Clinton/Monica Lewinsky/impeachment days that the ghost of Josef Goebbels was running the channel under the tutelage of Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch doesn’t run CNN but he is the role model all the infotainment and propaganda driven news channels ascribe to. I also have no doubt in my mind that the instructions and format emanate directly from the present White House. I just wish someone would come forward with evidence to prove it.

So I say it’s time we bury this smelly old corpse decorated with fake jewelry and painted with too much garish makeup and start from a new place again. We need a new all news cable network that espouses the spirit of the old news channel that Ted Turner built. Is anyone ready to step up to the plate? How about CBS? Shouldn’t they expand into cable network news? It shouldn’t be that impossible. After all NBC did.