The incredible
diminishing stature of mainstream news is perhaps
best symbolized by the
shameless sensationalism and search for
ratings of CNN. What would Thomas Jefferson
say now?
CNN: A Symbol of Journalism in Decline (El Universal, Mexico)
"The reporting policies of a news network launched
in the mid-1980s, and which changed the news business forever with a 24-hour cycle,
has become a source of shame and ridicule. ... The fact is that journalism as a
counterweight to power has blurred, becoming in many cases simply a business at
the service of corporate and political power, or a vulgar little window for
entertainment."
I
doubt anyone would have liked to be in Wolf Blitzer’s shoes on April 28.
Blitzer, one of CNN's main
presenters, was at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.
His
choked-up expression while many around him laughed offered a measure of the
humiliating public stoning he received during dessert.
First,
at the hands of President Barack Obama, who quipped sarcastically that if he
traveled to Malaysia last week, he did it in part to attract the attention of CNN, which has spent
two months looking for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the
Indian Ocean.
And,
then comedian Joe McHale’s cruel kick in the pants, when he suggested that,
apparently, CNN reporters were looking
for, not the wreckage of the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers, but for their dignity.
"Have
you watched the news? Not CNN. I
mean, like the real news?," McHale mercilessly popped.
After
this knock down, Blitzer's parting comment on McHale's performance upon
leaving the event wasn't surprising: He said it was "on the edge" of
what's permitted
when it comes to the sensitivity of a network used to criticizing, but not being
criticized.
Although
the White House Correspondents' Dinner has become the ideal moment every year for
the president to return the darts and stabbings he receives daily from the media - fairly or not - the fact is that
this time, the criticism of CNN was
ruthless but in no way undeserved.
It
was also applauded by a guild that has swung between contrition and outrage over
the decline of a news network that has decided to dip into cheap sensationalism
to prevent a continuing decline in ratings.
The
reporting policies of a news network launched in the mid-1980s, and
which changed the news business forever with a 24-hour cycle, has become a
source of shame and ridicule.
The
idea was born in 1985 in the mind of Ted Turner, a visionary who made real the
concept of the global
village first coined by Marshall MacLuhan, and
which launched journalists of enormous prestige like Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and
Peter Arnet (who incidentally were the first people to
broadcast the beginning of a war live from Bagdad in January 1991). Today, though, the network wallows between sensationalism and disrepute.
Wolf
Blitzer's image, with this long-running legend of breaking news narrating the latest
episode of a serialized odyssey, has been compared to the futile efforts of a
paramedic to resuscitate a patient who has been dead for hours.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
The
CNN news cycle has become a pre-fabricated
series where veteran reporters are subjected to humiliating sessions aboard flight
simulators or ocean submersibles to
entertain with the almost impossible mission of finding the wreckage of a plane
that may be lost forever in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.
In
the interest of journalistic rigor, the truth is that it isn't only CNN which has moved away from the
culture of journalism as a prosecutor of political power.
And
even if from political elites and mainstream media alike, the need is stressed
to honor the free press ideals of former President Thomas
Jefferson (and his famous aphorism Were
it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers,
or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer
the latter), the fact is that journalism as a counterweight to power has
blurred, becoming in many cases simply a business at the service of corporate
and political power, or a vulgar little window for entertainment.
