There’s a new “feature” on CNN. Every morning, at 6:30, they call a fellow-CNN personality at home, waking them up and asking them questions about the news. Supposedly the person had given consent for this at some point in the past, i.e. “Hey, some time in the next year, we’re gonna wake you up at 6:30 and ask questions about the news.”
Who the fuck makes this shit up? What kind of lamebrained executive ok’d this stupid idea? What, exactly, is it supposed to accomplish?
And this morning? They dialed a wrong number. Some unsuspecting Hispanic guy answered, and the co-hosts, not realizing their mistake, started joking with him . . . telling him they were from the FBI. Then the guy hung up on them.
By “fellow-CNN personality”, you mean just an average guy? I had a hard time understanding what you meant at first, since that phrase, to me, would be someone who regularly appears on the News show.
Well, they had been calling people like Wolf Blitzer, but this morning it was supposed to be comedian Chuck Nice. Oh, and to make matters worse, they were calling another time zone, so they woke the guy up at 4:30 am.
Other than C-Span and the occasional segment on Morning Joe, anything that airs between the hours of 6AM to 10AM can hardly be called professional journalism.
Do CNN morning news shows still show and discuss the morning’s leading newspaper articles? I first saw this done in the UK, which somehow made it seem charming. But CNN and their huge touch screen TVs are embarrassing to watch. “For our blind viewers, let me circle the tornado on the screen so they can see it easier. Oops, the cursor jumped. Tom, how do I undo this? Oh well, you get the idea. Now here’s Pam with today’s body-language analysis of Jerry Sandusky.”
It’s still better than “Fox and Friends”. I’d rather watch a dog eat its own stool than that show.
C-Span aside (which I’m not sure counts as journalism anyway), is there really any professional journalism left on television? I’m a news junkie, but I don’t watch any televised news (not because I’m snooty, but because it became too expensive to constantly replace televisions with remotes, shoes, bricks, cats, etc. embedded in the screen). I work at home so have small contact with the Real World, and rely on Netflix, streaming, and DVDs for entertainment–I’m really out of touch, so it’s possible Howard Beale’s prescience came to naught.
Oh, another reason for my possible mis-perception is that I do stream The Daily Show and Colbert. That could definitely be causing a skew.
Don’t get me started on their “Magic Wall,” or whatever they’re calling it this week. What’s “magic” is that the image on it disappears, due to being in perspective. The person standing in front of it, however, is perfectly clear. Nice to know what their priorities are.
And no, there’s no real news on tv anymore. Just Stewart and Colbert.
I saw this being (deservedly) mocked on The Daily Show. They called Kerry Kennedy and asked her if she had bad memories of her dad getting assassinated.
The anchor with glasses is teh hotness, but she lost crazy points for being involved in such a stupid act.
Well, I can get the BBC World News on BBC America in the morning and I can stream Al-Jazeera online, so that’s maybe one actual journalism on my cable subscription?
One thing I have been noticing lately about CNN is that I can’t seem to turn it on without, in fairly short order, hearing something to the effect of, “We should warn you, this video is disturbing!” I guess that I should stick to ESPN as my source for just-want-a-bit-of-noise-filling-the-room programming.