If you want your questions answered by the Most Trusted Name in News, this is the place. Here are a few topics of interest to the international public according to the latest CNN/Time polls:[ul][li]Will George W. Bush repeat the sins of his father and continue to ignore the economy?[/li][li]The failure of the Bush led invasion of Iraq win the peace[/li][li]The helplessness of US troops in the face of persistent lawlessness in Baghdad[/li][li]Suspicions by some that the pillaging of priceless antiquities was a pre-planned consiparacy by right-wing wealthy capitalists[/li][li]Widespread belief that the Bush administration values oil more than human life[/li]Still no evidence that weapons of mass destruction have ever been used in Iraq[/ul]Remember, you can trust CNN. Our reporters all have foreign accents and give you the news straight, now matter how depressed it might leave you.
Dear Reporter:
I was once forced to sit through a Wolf Blitzer speech, from which I learned that Wolf thinks about Wolf a great deal and how Wolf has done a number of interesting things in his life as Wolf Blitzer.
Was this an abberation or do you have to put up with hearing about Wolf all the time too?
CNN practically invented modern war news coverage–so why did Fox News get better ratings on their coverage?
I’ve got one! Two actually:
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What are some of the other stories you’re keeping under the covers, ala Saddam’s torture of his people? Castro’s similar sins perhaps? Is Lucia Newman’s safety that important?
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Do you have any other made up stories in the works? You know, something like that Tailwind bit?
Thanks.
A subsidiary question:
Hala Gorani dropped me from a report she was preparing on MENA economics. Could you check to see if that was due to the whole expressing interest in a drink thing? I was kidding. Really. Unless she’s not busy.
Why havent they found the weapons of Mass Destruction that Fox News have been creaming themselves anticipating?
Can’t one of you guys slip some Prozac into Jack Cafferty’s morning coffee? Just for once?
Can you tell me how terrible Ted Turner’s mood swings are/were?
What’s up with that annoying crawler on Headline News, and why are half the words misspelled? If you’re in the business of communications, shouldn’t you learn to communicate?
Robin
Why fault CNN? It was the crawler on ABC’s “World News Tonight” with Peter Jennings which informed its viewers that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was “in the hospital for an enlarged prostitute.”*
[sub]*To which his wife, Andrea Mitchell, responded, “He should be so lucky.”[/sub]
[nitpick] Actually, december, that howler was in the closed-captioning feed, not in the “crawler.” Errors are pretty common in the CC feeds, though not always as amusing as that one.[/nitpick]
And another thing–now that Gulf War II is over, what’s Aaron Brown going to act so serious about now?
Does Larry King really believe all the psychics he fawns over on his show?
I think I’m in love with your reporter Rym Brahimi. Would you mind asking her if she’d like to go bowling with me this Sunday?
It looks like CNN has gone offline 
Wolf responds:
Bill, these accusations are simply false. Throughout my career in news broadcasting, which spans decades, my primary concern has been not for myself, but for how the viewers perceive me. I believe that my primary duty is to report the news as I see it so that my viewers can understand the circumstances and nuances of my reports from my point of view. I seldom even think about myself, much less think about myself a great deal. This is Wolf Blitzer. I am, that is who I am, reporting live from Atlanta.
What have you done with Elsa Klench?
CNN believes that it isn’t ratings that matter. What matters is quality reporting and trust. As you can see by our slogan, we are the Most Trusted Name in News. We refuse to follow the lead of competing upstarts who feed on patriotism and other base emotions in order to produce ratings. It seems appropriate here to point out that no CNN reporter has ever drawn secret military plans in the dirt on live TV. […fade to image of angry Iraqis pelting American soldiers with rocks and shouting “No No Bush!”…]
I’ll throw this question to Nic Robertson. Nic?
Deep within the rubble created by an American missile lies the body of an Iraqi child, or so says this elderly woman whom you see crying on your television screen. All around me, I see nothing but desolation, poverty, and decay. Under the Ba’ath Socialist Party, one man told CNN, at least we had water to drink. Now, he says, we have nothing. Some say that the American soldiers taunt the people, yelling at them in broken Arabic, “Nyah nyah, we have food and you don’t!” Some say the soldiers laugh when they say it. At one hospital we visited, someone there told us that it was American soldiers, and not Iraqis, who were doing the looting. As you can see by the sad look on this man’s face, the people of Iraq might feel more like they’re occupied than liberated. Reporting live from Baghdad, this is Nic Robertson.
We are in fact experiencing periodic outages, due, according to an unconfirmed source, to sabotage by one of the competing upstart news networks. We are awaiting a report from Time Warner.
Can anyone raise their hand if they hate CNN more than [Lib?
Lib - If you were a Professional Boxer, I’d say as your trainer to watch as much CNN as you can - even at night whilst you sleep - so as when you fought your opponant you would be exhibiting the right amount of rage to win the fight. 