The New York Times published a piece yesterday about CNN’s recent woes as it has fallen behind MSNBC and Fox News in the cable news rankings. The piece suggests that CNN’s less-biased middle-of-the-road approach seems to be losing out to MSNBC and Fox’s model of opinion-infused content. The question seems to be, would CNN be more succesful if it sold the remaining pieces of its soul and joined the orgy of partisan programming that now fills the primetime slots at MSNBC and Fox?
As always, I don’t think I know, but I do have a few thoughts on the situation–and am curious to hear what you think.
First of all, I would point out that being less opinionated, or more objective than MSNBC and Fox News does not say much about the type of news coverage CNN is providing. CNN may be the lesser of three evils, but it is still in the business of infotainment. This brings me to my main point, which is that CNN is trying to have it both ways–they have positioned themselves as the only unbiased cable news network but are still trying to create entertainment and opinion-infused content.
I do believe there is a market out there for real objective news coverage—but I don’t think that market tunes into CNN during prime time, because as I said before, CNN is simply the lesser of three evils.
I would argue that CNN has to make a fundamental choice about what kind of a network it is going to be. If they want to take on MSNBC and Fox News and beat them at the infotainment game, they should unleash everyone and stop their lackluster attempts at real journalism. If, on the other hand, they want to be a different type of network, one that actually provides objective news coverage, then they need to ditch Lou Dobbs, tell Anderson Cooper to stop the awkward flirting sessions with his co-host, and get John King to stop playing video games while covering presidential elections.
In other words, using less opinion than MSNBC and Fox News obviously isn’t working, but, perhaps an honest attempt at opinionless news could.
Your thoughts?
PS: Another question for you: Is Glenn Beck a well trained actor playing a really big joke on everyone?
