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Cable TV News Networks Are a Total Turnoff
May 08, 2002
When Ted Turner launched CNN on June l, 1980, he boasted it would be on the air until the world ended, playing "Nearer My God To Thee," as it was performed on the Titanic when it went down. He hoisted the UN flag over his Atlanta headquarters to express his global ambitions for a 24-hour news channel to unite one world under television.
Turner was derided; CNN dismissed as the "Chicken Noodle Network." Operational control soon turned over to news pros who followed conventional thinking and TV formulas. Their fidelity was to the market, not Turner's mission. They packaged a video version of all-news radio. Among themselves - and I was there - they admitted that more news is not better news; their job was to fill the vacuum.
Revolutionary in audacity but conservative in content, CNN branded itself as the place to go whenever you wanted to see news. Its signature was going "Live." Its baptism of glory came with the Persian Gulf War. As ratings rose, CNN's reputation rose with it. As cable penetration of households expanded, its influence grew.
Two decades on, CNN is a synergized component of that media planet, AOL TimeWarner, with multi-channels and websites. It spawned clones and competitors locally, nationally and internationally: Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg and foreign challengers such as BBC and CBC. Their sameness overshadows their differences.
They all look like news is supposed to look. There are anchors, sets, sound effects and graphics. Most of the serious programming consists of pundit-driven panels with "experts" out of central casting, picked for stereotyped stances and skills as putdown artists. They generate heat, not light.
Except in crises, most of what we see on cable is not news but info-tainment, stock-market reports, weather forecasts, happy-talk chatter, soft features, celebrity interviews and dueling advocates.
As writer Michael Kelly explained: "You have this great maw that has to be filled. It can't be filled with facts. There aren't enough facts. It can't be filled with wisdom, because there are not enough wise people around. And it can't be filled with cleverness, because cleverness is hard to come by. So it's filled with blatherers."
And high-speed car chases, burning yachts and other vehicles in distress.
Meanwhile, in the ratings, Fox seems to be beating CNN at its own game - to the further corruption of Turner's founding vision.
"CNN is reduced to the degradation of imitating its inferior - but much snazzier and jazzier - competition," critic Tom Shales wrote recently. "It has a more Fox-like look on the air, and that includes not only making its 'shows' more personality-dominated - Lou Dobbs doesn't merely have his name above the title of 'Moneyline,' his name is part of the title - but also making the promos much more aggressive, trashier and so excessively frequent as to be virtually inescapable."
This morning - virtually every morning - CNN's 6 a.m. hour closes with a topical joke from Jay Leno. Is it news? Do I have to ask?
We are witnessing a diminishing commitment to journalism on the cable news networks. The form is there but the substance is shrinking as diversity of sources narrows and journalists are bailing out or being cut back at the newspapers whose content often sets TV's news agenda.
On the air, there is a blur between who is even a journalist. Watch CNN and Fox as I do each morning, and you find the weatherpeople having more face-time than journalists - and they're not just commenting on barometric pressure.
Next problem, the hyperactive story-count: more news in less time. This headline hit parade is interrupted by "Breaking News" signaled with heart-pounding noise and flashy logos. To keep you on fast forward, there is that ticker of moving type.
So how do you retain any meaning? You don't.
We end up with a scrambled understanding of events, as the anchors distort news by over-dramatizing incidents and pumping out visual footage with little time for interpretation, context or background.
Correspondents who keep updating stories have little time to report them. They're forced to pretend to know more than they possibly can, while doing what the industry calls SLRs ("silly live remotes") - standing in front of buildings for hours on end.
Ted Turner promised more than he could deliver, as do all 24-hour cable-news-a-thons. Yes, there are some good programs and thoughtful journalists. But are they enough in a post-9/11 world when our survival depends on us all understanding so much more?
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter, 'The News Dissector', was an American television producer, independent filmmaker, blogger, and media critic. He wrote and spoke about many issues including apartheid, civil rights, economics, foreign policy, journalistic control and ethics, and medicine. He was the author of many books including "Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror," "Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela," and "When News Lies: Media Complicity and the Iraq War." Schechter died of pancreatic cancer on March 19, 2015 in New York City.
When Ted Turner launched CNN on June l, 1980, he boasted it would be on the air until the world ended, playing "Nearer My God To Thee," as it was performed on the Titanic when it went down. He hoisted the UN flag over his Atlanta headquarters to express his global ambitions for a 24-hour news channel to unite one world under television.
Turner was derided; CNN dismissed as the "Chicken Noodle Network." Operational control soon turned over to news pros who followed conventional thinking and TV formulas. Their fidelity was to the market, not Turner's mission. They packaged a video version of all-news radio. Among themselves - and I was there - they admitted that more news is not better news; their job was to fill the vacuum.
Revolutionary in audacity but conservative in content, CNN branded itself as the place to go whenever you wanted to see news. Its signature was going "Live." Its baptism of glory came with the Persian Gulf War. As ratings rose, CNN's reputation rose with it. As cable penetration of households expanded, its influence grew.
Two decades on, CNN is a synergized component of that media planet, AOL TimeWarner, with multi-channels and websites. It spawned clones and competitors locally, nationally and internationally: Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg and foreign challengers such as BBC and CBC. Their sameness overshadows their differences.
They all look like news is supposed to look. There are anchors, sets, sound effects and graphics. Most of the serious programming consists of pundit-driven panels with "experts" out of central casting, picked for stereotyped stances and skills as putdown artists. They generate heat, not light.
Except in crises, most of what we see on cable is not news but info-tainment, stock-market reports, weather forecasts, happy-talk chatter, soft features, celebrity interviews and dueling advocates.
As writer Michael Kelly explained: "You have this great maw that has to be filled. It can't be filled with facts. There aren't enough facts. It can't be filled with wisdom, because there are not enough wise people around. And it can't be filled with cleverness, because cleverness is hard to come by. So it's filled with blatherers."
And high-speed car chases, burning yachts and other vehicles in distress.
Meanwhile, in the ratings, Fox seems to be beating CNN at its own game - to the further corruption of Turner's founding vision.
"CNN is reduced to the degradation of imitating its inferior - but much snazzier and jazzier - competition," critic Tom Shales wrote recently. "It has a more Fox-like look on the air, and that includes not only making its 'shows' more personality-dominated - Lou Dobbs doesn't merely have his name above the title of 'Moneyline,' his name is part of the title - but also making the promos much more aggressive, trashier and so excessively frequent as to be virtually inescapable."
This morning - virtually every morning - CNN's 6 a.m. hour closes with a topical joke from Jay Leno. Is it news? Do I have to ask?
We are witnessing a diminishing commitment to journalism on the cable news networks. The form is there but the substance is shrinking as diversity of sources narrows and journalists are bailing out or being cut back at the newspapers whose content often sets TV's news agenda.
On the air, there is a blur between who is even a journalist. Watch CNN and Fox as I do each morning, and you find the weatherpeople having more face-time than journalists - and they're not just commenting on barometric pressure.
Next problem, the hyperactive story-count: more news in less time. This headline hit parade is interrupted by "Breaking News" signaled with heart-pounding noise and flashy logos. To keep you on fast forward, there is that ticker of moving type.
So how do you retain any meaning? You don't.
We end up with a scrambled understanding of events, as the anchors distort news by over-dramatizing incidents and pumping out visual footage with little time for interpretation, context or background.
Correspondents who keep updating stories have little time to report them. They're forced to pretend to know more than they possibly can, while doing what the industry calls SLRs ("silly live remotes") - standing in front of buildings for hours on end.
Ted Turner promised more than he could deliver, as do all 24-hour cable-news-a-thons. Yes, there are some good programs and thoughtful journalists. But are they enough in a post-9/11 world when our survival depends on us all understanding so much more?
Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter, 'The News Dissector', was an American television producer, independent filmmaker, blogger, and media critic. He wrote and spoke about many issues including apartheid, civil rights, economics, foreign policy, journalistic control and ethics, and medicine. He was the author of many books including "Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror," "Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela," and "When News Lies: Media Complicity and the Iraq War." Schechter died of pancreatic cancer on March 19, 2015 in New York City.
When Ted Turner launched CNN on June l, 1980, he boasted it would be on the air until the world ended, playing "Nearer My God To Thee," as it was performed on the Titanic when it went down. He hoisted the UN flag over his Atlanta headquarters to express his global ambitions for a 24-hour news channel to unite one world under television.
Turner was derided; CNN dismissed as the "Chicken Noodle Network." Operational control soon turned over to news pros who followed conventional thinking and TV formulas. Their fidelity was to the market, not Turner's mission. They packaged a video version of all-news radio. Among themselves - and I was there - they admitted that more news is not better news; their job was to fill the vacuum.
Revolutionary in audacity but conservative in content, CNN branded itself as the place to go whenever you wanted to see news. Its signature was going "Live." Its baptism of glory came with the Persian Gulf War. As ratings rose, CNN's reputation rose with it. As cable penetration of households expanded, its influence grew.
Two decades on, CNN is a synergized component of that media planet, AOL TimeWarner, with multi-channels and websites. It spawned clones and competitors locally, nationally and internationally: Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg and foreign challengers such as BBC and CBC. Their sameness overshadows their differences.
They all look like news is supposed to look. There are anchors, sets, sound effects and graphics. Most of the serious programming consists of pundit-driven panels with "experts" out of central casting, picked for stereotyped stances and skills as putdown artists. They generate heat, not light.
Except in crises, most of what we see on cable is not news but info-tainment, stock-market reports, weather forecasts, happy-talk chatter, soft features, celebrity interviews and dueling advocates.
As writer Michael Kelly explained: "You have this great maw that has to be filled. It can't be filled with facts. There aren't enough facts. It can't be filled with wisdom, because there are not enough wise people around. And it can't be filled with cleverness, because cleverness is hard to come by. So it's filled with blatherers."
And high-speed car chases, burning yachts and other vehicles in distress.
Meanwhile, in the ratings, Fox seems to be beating CNN at its own game - to the further corruption of Turner's founding vision.
"CNN is reduced to the degradation of imitating its inferior - but much snazzier and jazzier - competition," critic Tom Shales wrote recently. "It has a more Fox-like look on the air, and that includes not only making its 'shows' more personality-dominated - Lou Dobbs doesn't merely have his name above the title of 'Moneyline,' his name is part of the title - but also making the promos much more aggressive, trashier and so excessively frequent as to be virtually inescapable."
This morning - virtually every morning - CNN's 6 a.m. hour closes with a topical joke from Jay Leno. Is it news? Do I have to ask?
We are witnessing a diminishing commitment to journalism on the cable news networks. The form is there but the substance is shrinking as diversity of sources narrows and journalists are bailing out or being cut back at the newspapers whose content often sets TV's news agenda.
On the air, there is a blur between who is even a journalist. Watch CNN and Fox as I do each morning, and you find the weatherpeople having more face-time than journalists - and they're not just commenting on barometric pressure.
Next problem, the hyperactive story-count: more news in less time. This headline hit parade is interrupted by "Breaking News" signaled with heart-pounding noise and flashy logos. To keep you on fast forward, there is that ticker of moving type.
So how do you retain any meaning? You don't.
We end up with a scrambled understanding of events, as the anchors distort news by over-dramatizing incidents and pumping out visual footage with little time for interpretation, context or background.
Correspondents who keep updating stories have little time to report them. They're forced to pretend to know more than they possibly can, while doing what the industry calls SLRs ("silly live remotes") - standing in front of buildings for hours on end.
Ted Turner promised more than he could deliver, as do all 24-hour cable-news-a-thons. Yes, there are some good programs and thoughtful journalists. But are they enough in a post-9/11 world when our survival depends on us all understanding so much more?
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