CNN Has Lost Its Way
As the progenitor of CNN and the man who told the New York Times editorial board back in 1980 that CNN's editorial strategy was built based upon "live, live and more live," I should be the last person to say that CNN made a mistake by going live to the Tea Party protesters in Washington last Sunday. When I heard one of the protesters demanding that President Obama and his "kind" were leading us to Communism, I had little doubt what "kind" he was talking about. Giving an audience of millions to enraged extremists is too great a gift to qualify as "freedom of speech."
I have written before that as my news mentor, UP's Bill Higginbotham said, "We don't have to quote every word that we hear, or show every picture we get." We do not have to give voice to the haters among us. I suppose no one could've stopped a Congressman from calling President Obama a liar because the networks had to carry his speech live, but CNN did not have to give live access to the voices of hatred at the Capital this weekend. When I ran the company, their voices would've been fed live into our editing rooms, where editors would've picked out the sound bites that were worthy of airtime. It may take an extra 10 minutes to get it on the air, but it performs as a necessary filter.
I have just seen last week's numbers, and I am glad to report that CNN's open air practice didn't do them any good in the ratings. For the first time that I can remember, MSNBC beat CNN in every single one of the demographics in primetime and in two (18-34 and 25-54) of the three demographics in total day. MSNBC beat CNN in total primetime viewing, but CNN edged them in total day. Fox, of course, swept them both in every category, and in primetime finished in the top ten of "adults 25-54" for the first time in a long time. It also finished eleventh in total day 25-54s. We know where the passion lies, and it ain't coming from the liberals.
President Obama is suffering from over-exposure and under-performance. It's about time he stopped talking and started doing. Otherwise, CNN will have no ratings at all.
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Here is a new idea... Try being different! Most of the networks are geared toward NY and LA audiences not middle America. All are pretty much the same and boring. Fox and Drudge are geared toward the under served Fly Over Country and so have higher ratings and less competition. So CNN find your own niche and fill it. Maybe the real news network without opinions, bias and points of view.
Here are some suggestions to CNN.
We don't need 2 hours of Anderson Cooper.
Have Larry stick to a story for no more than 3 days.
Wolf Blitzers War Room needs to be less War like.
Get true Journalists that ask real questions to real people. not just paid talking heads.
Stay true to Journalistic Protocol
Be the Sanity within the insanity of Cable News
Don't have Kate Gosselin on Larry King
that's all i can think of now.
CNN slogan for the future
"We Ask the Hard Questions, So You Get the REAL Answers"
I cannot add to your post Mr Schonfeld. I fully agree. Will you take the job back ?..... Please.
CNN missed the Blackwater scandal, the Bush Era Department of Interior corruption probe, the Bush-era DOJ corruption probe regarding the political witch hunt of Don Seligman and the corrupt hiring practices of the big0ts in charge of the Civil Rights division at the time; and they missed the Bush era voter caging scandal. (ACORN is small potatoes compared to this.)
CNN is the place for entertainment and occassionally, foreign affairs.
Used to be CNN was the station you turned to if you wanted the news. It really was losing me though,
I had already moved over to MSNBC in the evening, but when Lou Dobbs started in on the birther thing I quit completely. I could no longer trust that is was news they were giving me and not opinion. It actually forced me to think outside the box and search for news myself. Here's a little gem I found.
http://projectcensored.org/
"Project Censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism."
Walter Cronkite
Heard that.
I see no creativity anymore; all I saw was a nightly shout-fest. The basic problem is I did not LEARN anything from CNN. Instead, I got the latest soundbite of the day that then became a whole subject of the evening from two or four panelists split-picture so both sides can scream at each other.
It's CrossFire all over again. In the words of Jon Stewart, "Just. Stop."
CNN producers: how about putting people on the air who want to work together as opposed to people who want to scream at each other? There ARE articulate people out here in this great land of ours who can respectfully disagree and yet, hear each other out and attempt to gain some knowledge we did not know before. Do the work! Take some responsibility. Educate me.
What have we become? My guess is the ratings will take a hit without Jerry Springer each night. Oh well.
What a sad commentary of who we have become. It's why I stopped watching CNN.
100 percent in agreement with Mr. Schonfeld
Their "Gunboat Fight on the Potomac" debacle on 9/11 didn't help much either.
CNN has lost its way BIGTIME! They completely missed the story on Acorn. Long after Fox broke the story and congress voted to eliminate their government monetary contributions, CNN's "investigative" reporter Jennifer Yellin is now reporting NOT on the fraudulent ballots that Acorn submitted in Nevada, or the charges against Acorn workers in Florida-----No she is reporting how the filmakers who exposed this story are CONSERVATIVES and had an impartial guest warn about the dangers of hidden camera investigations causing the press to lose credibility. Now I know why CNN is losing market share and is barely a factor any more in news. CNN completely missed the Oil for Food scandal at the UN a few years back too. They are just no longer a news organization, it is all opinion and advocacy.
So you can watch Fox News....all Opinion and Advocacy.
About: CNN Has Lost Its Way by Reese Schoenfeld
Have you begun to be concerned that the most ignorant, wacko and extreme out there in this big country are seeming to get worlwide coverage, and even interviews by our major cable outlets? Consider the woman who was interviewed on, I believe it was, CNN, but maybe it was MSNBC or both- because she stood up and screamed at her Senator in a town hall meeting, that in her entire life she had never been so concerned or outraged at what was happening in America. That Obama had awakened the sleeping giant. Over what? Trying to provide decent healthcare??
This won her repeated coverage, and an interview on a major cable outlet. She wasn't too sure what she thought but was sure that people should pay for healthcare themselves, or help each other out, if they can't pay. it's not the government's job. I can just picture asking my neighbors to pay for that $3000 bag of intravenous drip for one day's supply in a 30 day course for leukemia. I could hit up the entire neighborhood, if I felt well enough. Alas she admitted that she hadn't considered whether Medicare or Social Security should be government programs either, because she was busy raising kids, and hadn't really thought about it, and her husband took care of all the finances anyway. I rest my case.
Who is giving these people airtime and access? Our journalistically challenged media giants.
Susan Simon
Having worked at Schonfeld's early CNN, with some of the smartest and most dedicated journalists, I often wonder what happened to that CNN. In an industry notorious for eating its young, we knew the whole world was increasingly watching, because we often did our job better than the others. It was the last time I was truly delighted to go to work. The tipping point was the Time Warner/AOL debacle, when corporate lawyers and bean counting bozos from hell turned CNN into just another Wall St. entertainment commodity.
In CNN's defense, it's the one news org to maintain international bureaus, while others shuttered up as if the non-U.S. world didn't matter. Guess we learned on 9/11 how well that corporate strategy worked.
My only quibble:
Two points. Two obvious points. 1) Today's news drives for sensationalism over proportionality. A sliver group of loud whackos is given an inordinate amount of coverage. 2) because the lion's share of viewers who plop their butts in front of the tube are conservatives, their coverage slants toward covering their preferences.
Point two is why anti-war protesters were barely covered at all. For the same reason you don't go to the movies to get a sense of typical American life, you don't go to cable news to get a sense of what people are thinking.
Part2of2
I too would like to see the delay between reporting and publishing or broadcasting. It can be done if the industry accepts standards and sticks to them. But you know Fox won't. Murdoch prides himself as an old fashioned media baron who controls news, influences policy, and makes and breaks politicians. Another competition CNN must deal with is the internet with the growing number of bloggers and citizen journalists who venture into the world of journalism, most without editors and not knowing the profession's do's and don'ts.
To me, the most corrosive impact on news is not rushing to publish or broadcast, it's the blending of news, commentary and analysis into one, giving the impression, especially to gullible and less than educated minds, that this mix is hard news. It's not. The absence of the Fairness Doctrine alleviates all from being authentically fair and balanced. That act was repealed partly from the expectation that news consumers are free to go elsewhere in the market for countervailing reports. Some do but most don't. Most stay with one or two channels, they have their favorite TV talking heads and are eventually guided by such programs like a car is guided in the ruts of the road.
One more thing. Why didn't you mention Lou Dobbs? Isn't he far worse as a monger of hate, fear and bigotry that one day's live coverage of a teabagger rally?
Part1of2
Reese Schonfeld,
I agree with your criticism on CNN's live coverage of the teabagger rally. I am not defending CNN's present stance but the statement "live, live and more live," was made almost 30 years ago and 7 years before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed. Back then, there was no FoxNews and CNN was alone with little competition in cable news. A lot of things developed since then and not all for the better.
I too believe not everything must be shown. Editing is paramount. It's the best way to ensure accuracy and completeness - as much as possible - but you must admit CNN didn't edit a lot of stories since its inception. Mistakes were made during the initial reports. Sometimes viewers were informed that the story is developing, implying changes and errors are expected but some erroneous initial reports made indelible marks in viewers' memories. Not all viewers watched the stories develop over their duration.
Newspapers, magazines, ABC, CBS, and NBC usually had time to check and edit because they published or broadcasted once or twice a day. In the competitive market of "breaking news" and the rush for exclusive stories, editing and source checking are set aside. All news outlets that publish news on the internet face the same stiff competition. Thankfully, some take the time to check sources and wait. Others don't.
See Reese Schonfeld's Profile
You may not have been watching CNN from 1980-1982. But in those two years, we had to apologize on the air only twice--both times for not giving one person a news story the right to reply before we aired it. I fired one of those people, and when Ted rehired her, we had a fight and I was fired (although he invited me to return the next week). I did not renew the contract of the other reporter, who failed to give Orrin Hatch the chance to reply on a story about Jimmy Carter's brother. In thirty years as a news man, I never spent a day in court or a dollar in damages. And most importantly, we edited everything that went on the air, except for the live. Despite all that, when I left CNN, it had a one rating, now it has a point-four or a point-six.
My CNN watching days during those years were limited. When I subscribed to the service, I watched CNN and Headline News. Back then Crossfire was an edgy program that pushed and exceeded the limits of good journalism. Compared to today's debates, Crossfire's early years were benign.
I long for those days when we saw counterpoints in the same segment or program. It happens these days but not often enough and certainly not on commentary oriented radio and TV programs. The Fairness Doctrine repealed in 1987 isn't suitable for modern media but something is needed to harness the out of control media partisan and fear mongering programs. Some of them are hardly about politics and more like on-air hatriot rallies. I commend your efforts to maintain the strict and necessary policy.
One other thing that I miss. The insulation of personnel issues in news organizations from the public. Such organizations are staffed by humans with flaws but the public doesn't need to know disputes over contracts, income, promotions, which host chases producers in the studio, etc. These days the inner workings of the news media have been transformed to sideshow soap operas.
So wait, by the last paragraph are u trying to say Obama is overexposed on CNN? Moreover, how is Obama "doing" supposed to help CNN more than MSNBC? The whole article is about CNN coverage, then you put in a pot shot about Obama at the end???? A pot shot that makes little sense when put In the context of your entire piece. As a journalist, I shouldn't have to explain this to you, but usually when you completely change the subject in an article you are supposed to have at least one intro paragraph signaling said change or else it sounds like you're rambling and ranting.
Here, here! Well said! (as an aside: I suppose George Jr. was under-exposed. Small favors.)
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