Alina Cho: Fashion Coverage Has A Place On CNN

When most TV news viewers think of CNN's Alina Cho, they think of her work on the network's "American Morning" or her hard-news reporting from North Korea. And maybe after this weekend, they'll think of her fashion coverage.

Cho is hosting a special on New York Fashion Week set to air Saturday at 2:30 PM, and she insists that fashion has a place on the hard news network.

"Hard news will always be CNN's bread and butter. Nobody does it better, in my opinion. And our viewers love and crave hard news," she told the Huffington Post by phone this week. "They want the headlines from the Middle East, they want all the political news. But I think that there is room for other topics like fashion, and I've said this many times: I don't think it makes me any less of a journalist to cover fashion. I also happen to be a journalist who was in Grant Park when President Obama won the presidential election. I was lucky enough to travel to North Korea twice on assignment with CNN, and I spent four months in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I like to think that I can do that and also cover another topic I'm passionate about, which is fashion."

The 30-minute special will include an interview with Victoria Beckham as well as segments on the influx of Asian designers (including fashion industry golden boy Prabal Gurung, who came to the US from Nepal after seeing an inspiring "Oprah" episode), the politics of a fashion show's front row, and how designers cast models for their shows.

Cho's struggle, as she explains it, is to make the coverage both "aspirational" and "accessible."

"I think that we should be covering stories that can play in Peoria," she said. "It's a little bit like walking a tightrope, because you want to be smart enough for the fashion crowd but accessible enough that the average CNN viewer, who loves news but may not know about fashion, will also be interested in watching."

The special airs Saturday, February 19 at 2:30 PM. A preview clip appears below.

WATCH:

Comments

[The Bitpyr8]

04:00 PM on 02/22/2011

CNN is lucky to give you 5 minutes of actual news content per hour, the rest is them either repeating what they just said, teasing you with what they are going to say after the commercial, or some banal banter on a topic of interest to about 3 people in the entire world. CNN used to be a reliable source of information, now it's basically a gossip channel.

The real observation here is that they are delivering a product that the public seems to want, infotainment. People don't want to be informed any more, that just makes you one of the intellectual elites that we have all been taught to despise and hate. They want to feel like they are informed while they are entertained. That's why most people in this country can tell you who was on American Idol last week but don't have a clue as to who represents them in their government.

[newsdudeATL]

09:33 PM on 02/21/2011

CNN is completely adrift. It's a sad state of affairs.

[wilinot]

08:26 PM on 02/21/2011

I'm not interested and I wondered why they were covering it too.

[ConnieInCleveland]

04:23 PM on 02/21/2011

It's called 'distraction', time to 'move along' to fashion! How sad. If news organizations like CNN had not done distraction and stuck to the facts, America would not be in this downward spiral. Shame on them!

[DeAnnaClaudette]

04:15 AM on 02/22/2011

Good lord. It's 30 minutes on a Saturday.

[ConnieInCleveland]

04:56 AM on 02/22/2011

You're absolutely correct. Trying to fit too much Internet into to little time, The worry of what is happening to our country, trying to do away with unions, which have protected our workers when other countries were abusing theirs has stressed me and I over reacted to the post.

My shame for reacting so poorly.

[BlueKansas]

03:56 PM on 02/21/2011

Alina Cho is a joke of a 'newscaster'. Even fashion week is too complex a story for her. She belongs on a soap opera, along with all the other over-primped bad actors, and she desperately needs to learn how to read a teleprompter.

[MsVella]

12:30 PM on 02/21/2011

Why wouldn't they cover fashion week? Its a cultural event.

[demomntgirl]

09:45 AM on 02/21/2011

they want their ratings....lower?

[martigras]

11:28 PM on 02/20/2011

On Saturday, they appeared to think it was more important than 70,000 people who showed up in Wisconsin. A true news station.

[Aitch5]

09:05 PM on 02/20/2011

F*c* FAshion

[Ty LaRue]

06:46 PM on 02/20/2011

Why is CNN covering Fashion? Because it isn't real news, you have to wait for real news to develop, and who has time for that (sarcasm)

[countdown69]

06:04 PM on 02/20/2011

Can't think of one "hard news" reporter on CNN. Let's not forget this was the same station that thought it was cutting edge to carry Whacko Bachmanns sleaze party response with her witchy eyes looking off to the side and her make up soooooo overdone I was a bit frightened. CNN used to be on top of their game - now they don't know what the game is anymore.

[bethonna]

02:43 PM on 02/20/2011

Why is CNN covering New York Fashion Week?
Because it wanted to get to the other side of the road.

[GAPeach99]

02:42 PM on 02/20/2011

I'm assuming many of the folks posting, who claim this particular show diminishes CNNs legitimacy as a new organization didn't watch CNN in the 80's and 90's. I enjoyed watching Elsa Klensch's show on CNN back then and no one complained that her show tainted the network's reputation.

CNN has done plenty of other things lately to besmirch their reputation as a real news organization - ushering the age of false equivalency and hiring tea-party hacks comes to mind -- but covering fashion week is NOT one of them.

[roch20]

02:31 PM on 02/20/2011

Victoria Beckham: "Well, I'm not Angelina, I mean, I don't know, c'mon." - That was a low blow! I hope Angelina will pass the page and ignore it completely as she does with any other of the nasty comments. Just sayin'.

[JKDM]

11:34 AM on 02/20/2011

Why is The Huffington Post covering the fact that CNN is covering fashion?