To Be Real

CNN's in fourth place. No surprise there.

Because by playing the other guy's game, you lose. It's the failure of many a formerly conscientious endeavor to fall victim to the undertow of fast trends and easy money.

And it's the typical result in a world where the corporate approach to life, liberty and the pursuit of profit dictates virtually everything.

For, Fox News is the Jesus Christ of Unregulated Capitalism, the progeny of an all powerful corporate godhead, whose message of universal consumption and tribal division is disseminated by media apostles in the form of twinkling pixels and brain-softening kilohertzs; Fox's power, far from being self-generated, is instead imbued by virtue of its target herd's aversion to pain and suffering (i.e., independent, empirical thought) and so effective is this sinful symbiosis that even the most ethical among us throw up our hands (after throwing up righteous streams of bile) and join in or just plain cadge onto the low-brow largesse.

CNN started out by merely being good (remember?), an antidote to the hoary network news bureaus and their paternal renderings of the day's events. And they were on cable, which made them less slick than their network forefathers, and thereby somehow more genuine by implication alone. They sent their correspondents all over the place, even employed people of color or varying percentages of body fat.

And they broadcast their brilliance 24 hours a day, baby. Never would we be at a loss To Know again.

But like all things, if it's working, there is money to be made and good intentions to be exploited. With success comes hubris and imitators and competition and eventual madness.

Enter the Fox, who took CNN's premise and promise and rewired it to appeal to a vast, disgruntled demographic which felt robbed of their memories of a golden era, when America was on top and certain people knew their place. Fox uses news as a delivery system for right wing doctrine, which trickles down from their suitably vulpine CEO. And CNN, having been so shrewdly, so rudely unseated, tried to assume the profitable characteristics of its rival and, like its similarly fraught, formerly triumphant cousin NBC, finds itself at the bottom.

Every week, it seems, we are treated to episodes from Theatre of the Blatantly Disingenuous, an American version of the patently hilarious panto that is a staple of the English stage, where men dress as women and women dress as men and morality is writ in crayon and outrageousness prevails and the audience cheers and boos with conscious abandon.

Only here, the broadly drawn characters have an audience that actually believes their cartoon histrionics.

It's no different than if David Koresh had had advanced broadcasting technology at his disposal, sequestered his more telegenic acolytes and used them to helm the "news" from Branch Davidian HQ to the audience held captive by the church's lethally compelling rhetoric of angels and demons.

If CNN, as indeed any person of organization of note, wants to reclaim its former promise, it needs to stop trying to imitate its competitors and be what it once was: real.

 

 

Comments

[TomR]

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With success comes…eventual madness.
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Or you can start with madness and become successful. Case in point: have you ever wondered how the frame “individual rational self-interest” took off with Ayn Rand, embraced by Alan Greenspan, and successfully spawned the powerful collection of right-wing think tanks, academic organizations, magazines and journals still influencing our society today?

The legal definition of a corporation as a “person” has been thoroughly disproved if one buys into “rational self-interest” and looks at how the banking corporations ran themselves into the ground. Still, Greenspan plays the victim:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/02/greenspan-john-taylor-fed-rates-china-opinions-columnists-housing-bubble.html

But what inspired Ayn Rand to take us all down this road? A statement by William Hickman, "What is good for me is right." Here we are in this situation today because Rand had an irrational crush on a teenage sociopath who murdered and dismembered a 12-year-old girl, the daughter of a banker.

Rand admired Hickman "because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people...Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." Rand loved Hickman’s mindset even though it led to murder.

http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm

Rand stated, "If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

There was nothing rational or reasonable about Ayn Rand’s thought process.

- Tom

[Kathy Kelly Krepps]

hey Steve - Enjoy you interesting insight on a variety of topics even if I don't necessarily agree. Reminds me of some debates I listened to between you and a certain Irish guy on a park bench in FM some years back.

[IslandGyal]

Steven Weber marry me!!!!!

Where did you gain all this insight? I loved the article. It was so spot on in the analysis of FAUX news and their viewers. Thanks for sharing it with us. I have Facebooked it.

[Antifascist-08]

Thanks Steven.

CNN = news run by bean counters

[JazzyJim]

CNN started losing viewers when it tried to duplicate the propaganda of faux "patriotism and religulous programming" syntax of Fokkks. Murdoch and Ailes were getting the "religious groups" from CBN and the Jerry Falwell mailing lists, those of the fearful and blind faith regions, to only follow the voices of their masters as broadcast over the propaganda networks of Fox and AM Talk Radio - where the KKK usually finds their voice. So the afraid, the blind faith flock, the uneducated and "we're with you" indoctrinated obediently followed the rants of their unbalanced Czars of Disinformation, that spoke to them and them only, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coultre, Falwell - telling them, their problems are not about them - but everyone else. You are not alone. "We surround them they don't surround us (tearing up). Just because McCain/Palin didn't win, doesn't mean you have to accept a legitimately elected President (Beckers suggested)". The hate and fear mongering fringes that Fokkks attracts is not what CNN should have tried to simulate - they should have stayed a news organization. Now they just appear desperate. Still, I go there first for a "breaking story".

[KickerBoard]

Nice article - spot on.

[benhawkins]

If a new straight news network came along now, it would do quite well. During their down time, they could show old CBS News special reports or "See It Now" with Edward R. Murrow from the 1950's and 1960's, back when there really was television news. Maybe hire actual reporters, not just pretty faces with empty stares. They could even teach these reporters how to use the telephone to check sources and do investigative journalism. Balloon Boy anyone?

[sabredance]

The demise of CNN has everything to do with the inability to understand what is news.

Fox isn't news, as posted above and below and ad nauseum. At best Fox is an opinion outlet. In print media, the emphasis on editorial content over news would make Fox akin to the Atlantic Monthly or the New Republic or the Nation, rather than Time or Newsweek.

Had CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC/MSNBC all taken the issue to the FCC and demanded that Fox change its label to reflect the reality of its programming, ie, from Fox News to perhaps Fox's "National Review," then there would be universal recognition. Fox would have a legitimate place on the cable box and the debate would be dead. And the other organizations would have stayed in the news business, ie, reporting. Each network could have spun off an opinion show to compete with Fox, but nothing would have compelled the news divisions to cease being news divisions.

The inability to make and demand the distinction between news and opinion, between reporting and editorializing, has both marked the failure and sealed the fate of television journalism.

And the republic is all the poorer for it.

[zagyzebra]

I rue the day Ted Turner lost his news network. With his departure, so went the integrity of the network.

[JazzyJim]

Sold his news network.

[MsMassachusetts]

Excellent article Steven. I have found myself increasingly turning to the BBC for straight news. I work with a woman who called her House Rep. and told her about how she gets all her news from the BBC. This Rep. was fascinated and asked her a LOT of questions regarding the why and when of her choice. The state of news in this country is abysmal.

[daffey]

CNN’s problem is that in trying to appeal to everyone, it’s appealing to no one. Today, unfortunately, most people go to the news sources that tell them the news the way they want to hear it. Conservative? Run to Fox News, or Limbaugh, or, or Beck. Liberal? Well, you have more variety there, which is sort of the problem. Basically if you AREN’T liberal, your choices are limited, giving those folks/networks more or less a monopoly. Liberals can take their pick, and do. So the audience is spread out more between CNN, MSNBC, the Networks, and various print media. CNN looks like it thought it could try to appeal to both. Not just the token liberal/conservative on the other cable shows, but actually present a variety of different broadcasts to appeal across the board. Hasn’t worked. Most conservatives still detect an underlying bias against their beliefs and policies, and most liberals want nothing to do with any show not advancing their agendas. So CNN probably just needs to make an executive decision. Go Right, and cut into Fox News’ monopoly, or go back to the its origins on the Left, and try to find some way to stand out among the myriad options for the left leaning news consumer.

[georgiaR]

Daffey
You are right on

[JazzyJim]

It's the "news and entertainment" doctrine that created this mess and allows FNC to run 24/7 propaganda and smear campaigns against those it wants.

[Charmed]

CNN is trying to compete with a entertainment station "Fox is Not Real News"....they are there to entertain the rightwing folks....and I have to admit they do a great job of entertaining them from morning to night.....smirking in the morning, crying in the evening, and screaming at night.

[susiesorority]

There are good news sources out there--Century Foundation's website is good for instance. Of course, it requires that you actually read and think. I don't know why this country expects to reap anything other than what it puts out--at any level-and the media is just a mirror for it all. It's awful.

[OldHick]

Enron's former accountants are creating the GDP number for today. We have a rigged tennis game, and possibly baseball (did you see the errors in the 8th inning of last Angels-Yankee game?), and Miss America runnerup with falsies and a rigged contest as an extravaganza.

. . I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.

[emilyringstrom]

CNN is now filled with programs such as Living Golf, Inside The Middle East, Connect The World, Backstory, Best of Backstory(do we really need two shows of the same show?!?), Amanpour, Quest Means Business(and who in God's name thought that putting him on air, was a good idea?!?), My City My Life, Inside Africa, Marketplace Middle East, Larry king(who has become a gossiping, tabloid-like old lady), The brief, Talk Asia, African Voices, iReport..and so on.
If I turn on CNN, and find actual news(preferrably World News, and nothing else), I feel as though I've won the lottery nowadays! It's become THAT BAD...!
I'm getting all the more inclined to switch to BBC, as they still ahve actual news - go figure! A bit of a yawn, but at least the news presented are factual, objective, and...they seem to be hubris-free! What a relief!
(I should underline the fact that, living in Sweden, I can only watch CNN International, and have no access to your regular, national channel...but I doubt there's that much of a difference!)

[cinemaven]

Sadly, CNN international is a breath of fresh air to those of us subjected to the dreck that is CNN regular...
Quest... I've actually injured myself rushing for the remote to change the channel when I hear his grating voice.