http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/ta041510.htmlThink Again: CNN Sells Itself Again (and Again)
SOURCE: AP/Mark Lennihan
CNN is working hard to claim credible nonpartisanship, but it's a seemingly hard sell given the network's push to attract right-wing viewers.
By Eric Alterman | April 15, 2010
"Journalism is our core value; it's who we are," Greg D'Alba, CNN executive vice president and chief operating officer for advertising sales and marketing, told an audience of potential advertising buyers on Tuesday morning in New York's Time Warner Center. "We're the only credible, nonpartisan voice left. And that matters," added Jim Walton, president for CNN Worldwide.
"Our mission, our mandate, is to deliver the best journalism in the world," chimed in Jonathan Klein, president for CNN U.S. "No bias, no agenda. We will never abandon our core faith in being the sole nonpartisan cable network in this country.":spray:
Well, as Ernest Hemingway's Jake Barnes once said in a decidedly different context, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" In fact,
to pretend that CNN has upheld the standards described above would be to embrace a fiction plotline so contradictory to our experience in reality that few novelists would dare try it. Remember, it wasn't long ago that Lou Dobbs broadcast nightly on the network, ratcheting up the racism of the anti-immigrant hordes and bestowing an undeserved stamp of legitimacy of the nutty "birther" movement.
snip//
In one respect, Klein was right.
CNN's downward ratings spiral has grown so pronounced that it is not even placing third anymore in the prime time sweepstakes on many nights, but is getting beaten by HLN, what one writer for Slate calls "a waiting-room budget brand, daily-tabloid style" network (also owned by TimeWarner). Larry King—Mr. Klein's idea of a journalist, apparently—saw his audience fall 43 percent for the first quarter of 2010 and 52 percent in March alone. Anderson Cooper's audience fell 42 percent over the quarter as well.
This rapid trip into the ratings toilet appears to have created a sense of panic at the network and its response has been just what it was in the past: to try to appease the far-right wing audience that has embraced Fox. New York Times pundit Ross Douthat noted that he attended a media event in Washington recently where he "watched a CNN producer try to persuade a gaggle of skeptical right-wing journalists that the network's hosts really are objective."
snip//
Douthat rightly observed that "People at CNN see themselves as victims of a polarized political culture."
But a more realistic view would paint them not as victims of such a culture but as its perpetrators. Insisting that you are not as biased as Fox is a lot like saying you are not as sick as a dead person. You may not be that sick, but it is not something worth bragging about. My guess is that CNN will continue its collapse in the ratings until its executives can proudly describe it in a manner consistent with what viewers see on their TVs.
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