So CNN just now figured out that someone like Jeffrey Lord doesn’t belong on their team of analysts? Because of a single tweet that was meant as a joke, and not because of all of the other eye-popping idiotic defenses of Fuhrer Trump? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they ditched him, but why the fuck was he there in the first place? What is the value?
Oh, that’s right, to hear the other side of the debate:rolleyes:
What if the other side isn’t really worth understanding? I think that’s really the problem here: CNN fell into the Fox News trap of buying into this notion that there are multiple truths, multiple correct answers and that they all hold equal validity and should be heard, which is nonsense.
Beyond that, believe it or not, I actually sympathize with its right wing critics when you get some idiot like Jim Acosta who mouths off at a press conference. It’s not his job to express opinions and editorialize at a press conference; it’s his job to ask tough questions and report the answers – that’s it. Nothing else. Sit down and shut up and let someone else hopefully ask even tougher and better questions than the softball shit they’ve been tossing up for years.
CNN might think they’re being tough on the president and that they’re doing real journalism, but they’re not. They’ve been doing entertainment journalism for years and they, as much as any network, have fostered the alternate truth and post-truth journalistic era and allowed it to flourish. Only now that they’re on Trump’s shit list are they trying to do some real reporting, but it’s probably too late.
CNN keeps shooting themselves in the foot. They’re becoming everything the right-wingers are accusing them of when they fabricate stories, and overextend themselves as victims whenever there’s pushback. They should have just maintained a dignified humor about the Trump/CNN wrestling video, but instead acted as if they were having their lives threatened.
That’s a prime example. I think CNN just exploited the whole thing for drama and to put themselves in the headlines. They’ve completely discredited themselves, so it’s no wonder that they’re a punching bag for the right. They long ago stopped doing serious journalism. I think there are a few serious journalists remaining but they’re hanging by a thread and probably just there for the paycheck.
That’s how they make money. And that’s the biggest problem with journalism. The commercial-watching masses don’t want serious journalism, so CNN, Fox, et al have to feed the beast what it wants, not what it needs.
CNN didn’t arrive on the media map until their first big 24/7 reality show hit “Operation Desert Storm.” Remember when their reporter stood on the balcony of his hotel in Baghdad and served as a spotter for Saddam’s bombs? And when Bob Simon got captured by the Iraqis? You can’t make this stuff up. They were a straight news network before that, but no one cared. Entertainment, thrills, chills, and spills-- let’s give the slavering crowds what they want. CNN will be the first to televise executions and gladiatorial combat to the death. With well-dressed/coiffed pundits on hand to tell us what we’re seeing and what to think about it.
You’ve noticed who their advertisers are, right? Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Defense Contractors? What else would you expect? They’re never going to report news that threatens their livelihood.
Lord was a known factor. There is NO way they didn’t know something was seriously wrong there.
I agree with you. This asshole was just one of the many examples. I am sick of this "fair and balanced, both sides bullshit.
Sometimes there IS no both sides, there is no balanced. Sometimes the other view is not valid, sometimes a cancer, a rot, that should not be presented, respected, or tolerated in polite discussion.
The sad part is, it actually used to be a network of solid reporters until the early 1990s, until they were corrupted by their Gulf War I success. CNN doesn’t really seem to do a lot of really good investigative reporting, and they’ve had more than their fair share of embarrassing gaffes over the past 20 years. There was the Vietnam nerve gas story they had to retract in 1998. And more recently, of course, they sacked reporters related to the story on Scaramucci. To be fair, none of the TV networks do real investigative reporting now.
Is Sanjay Gupta still around? As their official medical expert he was known to have lucrative personal contracts with Big Pharma, and so it wouldn’t surprise me that he also got gifts of appreciation like a Mercedes or three from health insurers and the like. He once hosted a program on “health care in America”. Turns out, it’s a real head-scratcher, what to do to improve health care in America. No one knows. Maybe nothing. No one has ever thought to look at what other countries are doing. Still, we’ll come back and think about it some more, right after these important messages from Cigna, United Health Group, and America’s Health Insurance Plans on behalf of everyone in this great industry! :rolleyes:
Once again I invoke the old maxim, “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. CNN I mean, not Lord. Jeffrey Lord may be a far-right Trumpist asshole, but to CNN he was the consummate smooth-talking pundit who could be installed in front of a camera and broaden their appeal among the idiot demographic, which is large and growing.
I don’t love CNN (the website, not TV - I virtually never watch television news) - their bias shows and they are frequently sloppy. But I have taken to checking their website regularly since Trump arrived on the scene, as they can be counted on to document every outrage in detail. And some of their opinion pieces are okay for a quick reinforcement of views I already hold. I feel like I can sort out and evaluate their biases, since they don’t really cloak them.
Having said that, I feel a lot more sympathetic to them than I used to. The Lord thing is stupid, but I don’t count it against them if they try to have a few conservative commentators around. If nothing else, it makes them a smidgen less vulnerable to criticism from the right about “lame stream media” and left-wing MSM bias. (As for that, I think their bias isn’t so much in terms of total coverage - they will hold their nose and gamely report news that doesn’t support the liberal narrative - as in they way they write headlines or occasional sentences.)
Since I made a point of subscribing to WaPo and NYT, I feel better informed. (WaPo news alerts sent to my inbox often beat the CNN website in terms of breaking news, I am finding.) But given how the media is under attack these days, I’m supportive of any attempts to keep reporting what is really happening, even CNN’s imperfect efforts.
My point was simply that I tend to blame the actual journalists less than the constraints under which they’re working, as dictated by their advertisers.
No idea. I haven’t watched them regularly in years, except to catch an occasional episode by Fareed Zakaria.
There’s no shortage of decent conservative commentators. CNN already has David Frum on board doing occasional commentary, and I know they have others. There’s no need for them to hire loons. I still say the most plausible explanation is not that they’re leaning rightwards, but that they have low standards. Some of their talking heads are neither obviously left nor right politically, but just blithering airheads.
That said, CNN has been quite entertaining ever since Trump declared war on them, because they can dish it out pretty nicely when they put their minds to it.