Passing Thought
Do you watch CNN at all?
Do you wonder, as I do, what that middle “N” stands for?
I’d have to say that the last time I watched the channel at length was September 11, 2001, and only switched away when I couldn’t take any more of Aaron Brown and also realized that Peter Jennings and Peter Mansbridge were doing spectacular jobs of covering the day on ABC and CBC. But today I was subjected to close to an hour of viewing while my car was being serviced, and felt like I was reading some greasy little tabloid newspaper. The hour led with a “Special Report” about the lavish lifestyles of girlfriends of Colombian drug lords. Huh? There was a segment called “What the….”, highlighting more unusual “news” stories, and various other bits and bobs that would have easily been placed on the spike of respectable newsrooms everywhere (in other words, they would never have run them)
Even if you were to call the stories “news”, you couldn’t, because the anchor laced every intro with editorial comment and opinion. Scathing opinion in some cases. Do they not teach balanced news coverage in Journalism school anymore?
Is it like that all the time? When did it get so tabloid-like? Who do I write to about this?
