How CNN Betrayed Its Audience
February 23, 2022 12:45 PM   Subscribe

Nearly two years ago, in spring 2020, CNN found itself with a blockbuster. The network put anchor Chris Cuomo on air interviewing his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, about his state’s response to COVID-19. The string of segments made Andrew Cuomo a liberal hero, feted as the anti–Donald Trump, and the fraternal jibes between the men made for entertaining viewing.

The term blockbuster is borrowed from a massive bomb–and this one has gone off with devastating results. Andrew Cuomo was forced to step down this past August. Chris Cuomo was fired in December. CNN’s worldwide president, Jeff Zucker, has resigned. [The Atlantic] posted by riruro (27 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Burn it to the ground and start over.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:47 PM on February 23, 2022 [5 favorites]


I'm a stereotypical New York liberal, and I find myself getting annoyed by what seems like a biased tone on CNN's part. NEW YORK TIMES leans too far the other way, though, so I have been gritting my teeth.

This is likely going to make me throw the towel in on the entire United States journalism market and going to the BBC for my news.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:50 PM on February 23, 2022 [7 favorites]


Blockbuster turned Thermobaric.

thermobaric weapon...is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. In practice, the blast wave typically produced by such a weapon is of a significantly longer duration than that produced by a conventional condensed explosive."

posted by clavdivs at 12:57 PM on February 23, 2022


This is likely going to make me throw the towel in on the entire United States journalism market and going to the BBC for my news.

I'm not a fan of Al Jazeera, but they do a better job covering the US than anything in the US.
posted by nushustu at 1:15 PM on February 23, 2022 [26 favorites]


going to the BBC for my news.

The problem is that the BBC is now as paralysed, demoralised and defeated by the relentless pressure of moneyed and powerful interests as any other news organisation. At this point, I think The Bugle is probably my preferred source of news: it's no less accurate or biased than anywhere else and has more jokes.
posted by howfar at 1:27 PM on February 23, 2022 [15 favorites]


I've been really disappointed by how well the "inappropriate relationship" PR push has worked to frame headlines, presumably because people will see it was a consensual relationship and think it isn't such a big deal.

But then you get down toward the end of an article, and lo and behold:
By early January, Cravath’s investigation was moving forward, and the tenor of its questions had begun to shift.

What had started with a focus on Mr. Cuomo’s behavior was morphing into a broader look at Mr. Zucker’s handling of the anchor and his interactions with the Cuomos.
Jeff Zucker is actually resigning because of how he, the person he was in a relationship with, and the Cuomos collaborated to let a news network become a bully pulpit for New York's shitty, arrogant bully-in-chief. The relationship is a part of that, but it sure isn't the whole of it, and it would be nice if headlines reflected that.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 1:58 PM on February 23, 2022 [15 favorites]


Seeing a bin full of CNN's War in the Gulf VHS tapes made me realize what CNN's business model really was.

That CBS dude said it 20 years later, but bad news is good news if you're in the news business; "if it bleeds it leads" also
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:38 PM on February 23, 2022 [5 favorites]


It's ok CNN still has *checks notes*... everyone's favorite Vanderbilt heir Anderson Cooper, SNL-boosted diet islamophobe Jake Tapper (who I guess in their mind is canceled out by Fareed Zakaria even if he was pro-Iraq War), and a new righteous war to cover ad nauseum 24/7.
posted by JauntyFedora at 2:40 PM on February 23, 2022 [7 favorites]


From several states away and never watching television news, I wondered why a bunch of people were suddenly in love with Andrew Cuomo, when he always seemed to be a pretty pointless governor who was doing an especially bad job with COVID. It turns out it was an actual conspiracy.

Meanwhile, Kentucky Gov. Andrew Beshear actually was doing the good work of caring for his people that CNN pretended Cuomo was. (But you don't get far in the national media mentioning someone from the southeast doing a good job at something.)
posted by hydropsyche at 2:58 PM on February 23, 2022 [33 favorites]


Somewhat related [CW: suicide talk]:

Q. What makes you eager to see a Turner biopic now?

Ted has Lewy Body Syndrome — the same irreversible brain disease that Robin Williams had and he ended up killing himself. I thought this is the same thing that could happen to Ted. Ted's famous for carrying a silver pistol that his dad committed suicide with. He's packed it all his life. If he loses his brain I'm sure that he will follow Robin Williams so I thought, it's time to get something made.

From: Q&A: Ted Turner Biographer Porter Bibb
posted by chavenet at 3:25 PM on February 23, 2022 [6 favorites]


The problem is that the BBC is now as paralysed, demoralised and defeated by the relentless pressure of moneyed and powerful interests as any other news organisation. At this point, I think The Bugle is probably my preferred source of news: it's no less accurate or biased than anywhere else and has more jokes.

The problem I have with the BBC print/web version is that somewhere along the line it adopted the Newsweek content-mill style of hundreds of nearly zero intellectual calorie single paragraph articles. At least they don't have a million popups and ads but so much of the content has been pared down to wikipedia stubs that avoiding web dark patterns is usually completely hollow victory. Every now and then they do a real article but mostly I'm kind of embarrassed for them because of what they once were compared to what they now are.
posted by srboisvert at 3:40 PM on February 23, 2022 [5 favorites]


Zucker turned CNN into a free platform for Trump during the 2016 primaries, never forget that.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:42 PM on February 23, 2022 [30 favorites]


I'm not complaining about the article or the post. . . but, compared to either US-Iraq war? CNN has been betraying its audience since the day it was born. That's what they do. That's they're job. This one has probably killed millions of fewer people than tens of their extreme and dangerous misstatements. (Which isn't to say pointing it out is bad.)
posted by eotvos at 4:48 PM on February 23, 2022 [3 favorites]



This is likely going to make me throw the towel in on the entire United States journalism market and going to the BBC for my news

The BBC is much better, including that they focus on climate change as the world ending catastrophe it is.
posted by chance at 6:10 PM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]


Zucker turned CNN into a free platform for Trump during the 2016 primaries, never forget that.

and then as soon as he got elected, they became more or less the official opposition, which was perhaps less bile inducing than the opposite (FOX) but hardly my idea of a functional news source. Good for business though.
posted by philip-random at 6:27 PM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]


This betrayal is not particularly new for our mainstream press despite all the idealistic pablum they love to bellow.

These folks have seldom operated on any ideals beyond serving themselves. The political stance is not much more than product differentiation.

Jeff Zucker, the Cuomo brothers, Andy Cooper would sooner hobnob with Roger Ailes, Karl Rove and Roger Stone at Cipriani than waste their time chatting with a school teacher or social worker.

They're all in it for themselves, but so many liberals are as guilty of the same primitive "our team versus theirs" mentality that they hold the flyover states in contempt for.

It's not just CNN. The New York Times and NPR are full of this stuff too, but many liberals still see them as some sort of paragon, even after they did Bush II's bidding and full-throatedly led us into the Iraq War boondoggle.

The BBC is no better. It's still state-funded media. Do you think the BBC World Service operates in dozens of languages around the world as a charity? Their main parallel is Radio Free Europe/Asia and no one mistakes RFE/RFA as objective.

Former BBC director Peter Horrocks has said he visualized the organization as fighting an "information War" as a means of extending international influence and soft power.

Everyone knows about BBC's uncritical reporting in the run-up to the Iraq War, but the clown act extends to things like employing Jeffrey Epstein co-defendant Alan Dershowitz as an analyst for the Ghislane Maxwell trial.
posted by Borborygmus at 6:27 PM on February 23, 2022 [7 favorites]


I've pretty much removed the NY Times from my media diet, as they've not only embraced conservative views, they frequently give the NYPD free reign over reporting. I've been following Alec Karakatsanis, who highlights the heavy pro-cop bias in the paper's reporting, focusing on who, exactly, paper uses as sources (nearly all either cops, police union leaders, or other pro-cop sources). Yet the paper is still held up (by conservatives) as some sort of paragon of liberal virtues, and it seems its only real use is for those conservatives to claim that "the liberal NY Times agrees with us!" as if that's somehow still relevant or even accurate.

The Washington Post being owned by Bezos is a huge sticking point for me, as are their attempts to keep up with the Times by letting incredibly odious op-eds. I'd rather not rely on the BBC or the Guardian because of their non-stop promotion of anti-trans hate.

I am vaguely hopeful that good things come out of WBEZs purchase of the Chicago Sun Times, but it's kind of hard to see the paper as anything but a Chicago focused paper, not really featuring the sort of reporting we'd like to expect of the Post and the Times.

The Miami Herald? The Kansas City Star? Those seem to be solid, but I'm just not familiar with them.

For a while I was watching CNN (not a lot of English language news in Japan), but had to stop. Cuomo's smugness had me changing channels the second he popped up. Cooper seems all trustworthy and noble until you remember he's an heir to unfathomable riches, and that it colors his reporting on anything to do with taxes and wealth. The pearl clutching over any possible defunding of police was excessive, and yeah, I'm done with them, too.

So, where to get actual trustworthy news?
posted by Ghidorah at 7:24 PM on February 23, 2022 [3 favorites]


BBC America can be good, but overall I prefer France24 for my TV news. CCTV is an English-language Chinese news station that I like to stop off at every once in a while for some different angles and topics. I watch these off of an antenna so they might be available everywhere, or relatively everywhere.

WaPo and NYT have removed themselves from my life by locking me out without even one article to read. I actually don't even know if they allow free reading at all anymore (outside of workarounds) it's been so long since I haven't been paywalled. I get the headlines on Twitter, and that's generally enough.

NPR I gave up on at least 10 years ago, they were so squishy during the Bush years. Weekends can be fine, but I'm way out of the habit.
posted by rhizome at 11:27 PM on February 23, 2022 [3 favorites]


The idea that a network head screwing an underling is a fireable offense is exceptionally brazen.
posted by rhizome at 11:30 PM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]


Cooper seems all trustworthy and noble until you remember he's an heir to unfathomable riches

That Vanderbilt money is long gone.
posted by Optamystic at 2:12 AM on February 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


I like France 24 and Al Jazeera best. NHK English service and DW ( German with an English language option). I do still check in on Bosnian TV FTV and Hayat being favorites.
I live in a small town and do not have cable. Our news paper only has 3 days a week of being in print now.
Access to decent journalism is a problem. Papers being paywalled is a serious issue. Some people really have to avoid big expenditures. Even incrementally they add up. In theory, I could do a weekly library run and just read that stuff free. It really doesn’t work that way anymore, particularly in winter.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:17 AM on February 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


the BBC World Service operates in dozens of languages around the world as a charity? Their main parallel is Radio Free Europe/Asia and no one mistakes RFE/RFA as objective.

The really weird thing about the World Service is that it was much better trusted in the last century, not just despite (until 2014) being fully funded by the Foreign Office, but actually because of it. The FO of old (before its own disemboweling by repeated humiliations and power grabs from No. 10, in particular over Iraq and Brexit) possessed, and had power to fight for, the understanding that providing a trusted voice generates the amounts and kinds of long-term soft power that cannot be achieved with propaganda. Good quality and relatively impartial international state broadcasting is part of a successful foreign policy, of the sort that Britain (largely) operated after Suez and before Iraq 2. In the 40ish years that British foreign policy was heavily influenced and almost entirely implemented by people who actually understood international politics, Britain often actually did "punch above its weight" in matters of soft power and diplomacy. My impression (although I'm far from knowledgeable on the specifics) is that RFE & RL were similarly more independent, trusted and effective when largely funded and controlled by the CIA, and that US overseas broadcasting only finally became a total joke as a result of (you guessed it) Reagan's interference.

TL;DR - international state broadcasting is not necessarily bad broadcasting, but it is bad broadcasting when it's a reflection of ill-conceived and self-harming foreign policy.
posted by howfar at 11:12 AM on February 24, 2022


I stopped watching TV news, CNN and MSNBC particularly, years ago because it was rarely actual news. It's basically mostly people talking about what other people said about the news in between commercials. Yet if there's news happening live, like January 6, they're invaluable.

Sometimes people here or on one of the commentary blogs I read or my selective Twitter feed point to real cable news gems like Eddie Glaude preaching on MSNBC, after the El Paso shootings in 2019 [SLYT].

CNN has a text-only site that I keep in my bookmarks so I can check on the chatter. NPR has a text-only site too.

The Guardian, NYT, NPR, and WaPo are of course human endeavors and thus deeply, deeply flawed. I constantly try to remember not to let the perfect be the enemy of the merely good - or mediocre - or often but not always downright wrong. I consider them blind pigs who sometimes turn up an acorn of news.
posted by conscious matter at 11:49 AM on February 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


I have Axios in my RSS reader and it seems ok. It's US news, but it's short and dry, and not constantly updating as to maximize engagement. For example, they had a whole 26 posts on Feb 22, and each post only contains a few sentences.
posted by meowzilla at 1:33 PM on February 24, 2022


What news sources do you suggest, Borborygmus?
posted by Selena777 at 7:41 AM on February 25, 2022


A bit baffling to me that no one has even mentioned the Guardian. No their coverage isn't as comprehensive, but it's nowhere near as militaristic as the BBC, the NYT, or CNN.

I find myself getting annoyed by what seems like a biased tone on CNN's part. NEW YORK TIMES leans too far the other way

Where do they diverge? I'm not being facetious, this is also a genuine head-scratcher to me. I don't follow either very closely tho tbh.
posted by viborg at 1:07 PM on February 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Where do they diverge? I'm not being facetious, this is also a genuine head-scratcher to me.

Some of CNN's "reporting" sounds more like left-leaning opinion pieces to me. Some of the NY Times pieces have the same problem, only right-leaning (in a faux-naif "we're just considering all sides" kind of way).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:16 PM on February 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


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