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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/22/2003 11:50:15 PM PST by Norman Arbuthnot
You’d think someone would cut CNN a break. After all, it’s the most substantive news source on television. In the past two years, its ratings have increased 40 percent. It makes a lot of money. And yet, all you ever hear about CNN is that Fox News is kicking its ass.
The imminent departure of CNN chairman and CEO Walter Isaacson only emphasized CNN’s image problem. Isaacson, an author and journalist until he joined the channel two years ago, is leaving to join a think tank, apparently because he didn’t like the superficiality of television and hated commuting to Atlanta. Sounds about right to me.
Yet Isaacson’s departure was widely portrayed by the press as another sign of chaos at, as the New York Post put it, "Struggling CNN." The not-exactly-objective Post (like Fox News, part of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp.) wrote that Isaacson’s replacement "will have to solve [the] Fox riddle." And it’s not only the Post -- CNN has been fighting the media paradigm of a CNN vs. Fox feud for years now.
The story of the dueling news channels is another round in the ongoing fight over liberals versus conservatives in the media -- and the promoter of this particular clash is Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News.
Ailes wanted to make his news channel conservative while at the same time calling it "fair and balanced." But Fox could only be balanced if there existed a competitor as liberal as Fox would be conservative. And that competitor couldn’t be the networks, because it had to be a realistic rival, and Fox News Channel will never beat network news in the ratings; their reach is just too great.
CNN was a sitting duck. Though it wasn’t particularly liberal, founder Ted Turner certainly was. Moreover, CNN was a little somnolent in the pre-Fox era, a little complacent. Ailes’ genius was to establish CNN as a straw man and then beat it about the head and face, using the rivalry to energize a base of conservative viewers.
It’s the kind of thing that Ailes probably learned from his time in conservative politics: Pin a label on your opponent, and he’ll have to waste his time fighting it. And, lesson number two, the media is lazy: Create a narrative for them, a horse race, a competition, and that’s how they’ll write about something. As a result, suddenly Isaacson found himself traveling to Capitol Hill to assure conservatives that they could go on CNN without fear of being bullwhipped, and CNN had to fend off reports that the Israeli government was displeased with its liberal, pro-Palestinian tilt.
Now, hardly a day goes by without someone on Fox dissing its "competitor" CNN. The most egregious example came from Ailes himself. After CNN hired away Fox anchor Paula Zahn -- one of CNN’s best moves in recent years -- Ailes sniped that he could have put a dead raccoon on air and gotten better ratings than Zahn did. In retaliation, he promptly hired away CNN’s Greta Van Susteren.
The real genius of Ailes’ strategy is that it makes Fox look strong by creating a rivalry that really doesn’t exist. It’s comparing apples -- a respected, serious news bureau -- with oranges, a "news" channel that is really just ideologically-driven news-lite. I like Fox -- it’s energetic and fun to watch -- but I think of it more as entertainment than as news. If CNN is the Wall Street Journal, Fox is the New York Post, and on television, the Post wins that matchup. That’s why Fox now beats CNN in the ratings, but CNN and CNN Headline News pull in about $300 million in ad revenue a year, as compared to Fox’s $110 million.
The unfortunate part of this story is that, along with the print media, CNN's managers and producers have made the mistake of accepting Ailes’ narrative about them, competing on Fox’s terms rather than touting their own network as being a cut above Fox's biased infotainment. It adopted screaming graphics, an annoying news ticker with remarkly little actual news, and briefly considered using hip-hop slang to attract younger viewers.
CNN hired Connie Chung for a "news" hour every night. I’m sure Chung is a perfectly nice woman, but her hourly show is a tabloid-driven disaster that taints the CNN brand. Meanwhile Larry King seems to have grown obsessed with the blue-haired crowd. A good number of his recent guests are either dead -- that is, repeats of past King interviews after the subject has passed on -- or about to be. It’s like watching a filmed version of Parade magazine.
CNN needs to change the terms of this debate. On the eve of war, we don’t need liberal or conservative TV news. We need TV news that at least tries to be objective. That’s one fight CNN can win easily.
Also, I find it odd that the author of this piece would choose to compare CNN to the Wall St. Journal. Wouldn't the New York Times be a better analogy?
And is it fair to compare the ad revenue of CNN and CNN headline News to Fox? I think CNN still has a big edge in terms of the number of households that it is available to.
I agree with this guy's assessment of the Larry King and Connie Chung, and that's about it.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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He left out the laughing stock: Donahue
Norman Arbuthnot is my FR screen name and a fictional character I might add.
The author of this piece is Richard Blow.
This is the standard refrain from leftists trying to discredit any source of information that treats conservatives fairly. It is monotonously transparent. I dearly hope they keep using it...JFK
Bias in reporting is the twisting or suppression of the objective facts of a case to provide support for a particular point of view. We accuse organs such as CNN and the New York Times of bias because we feel they deliberately distort the facts, or bury them entirely, when the facts support conservative positions. If we're fair minded, we'll be just as hard on Fox if we ever catch it distorting its coverage to favor anyone's convictions -- ours or anyone else's. So far, Fox doesn't appear to be guilty of any such thing.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
Sounds about right. They probably started with about 10 viewers - it's possible they've gone up to 14.
that's what we in the business call a "lie"... it's very useful in getting people to think wht we want them to think. Here's another example from the article: "The real genius of Ailes’ strategy is that it makes Fox look strong by creating a rivalry that really doesn’t exist. It’s comparing apples -- a respected, serious news bureau -- with oranges, a "news" channel that is really just ideologically-driven news-lite. " See? Even though the FOX-CNN thing really IS a rivalry, slandering FoxNews as "ideologically-driven", while implying that CNN is not, is a GREAT way to get people to think things that we want them to, even though they might not necessarily be based in anything as trifling as "facts." Lies: they're not just for politicians anymore!
Isn't Richard Blow formerly of "George" mag and wrote a book about JFK, Jr. to the distress and much criticism of his former co-workers?
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