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Home Front: Culture Wars
Panelists Worry About Fate of CNN
2012-12-04
The challenges of being a dinosaur when the killer asteroid hits atmosphere.
[Newsbusters.Org] Now that former NBC News president Jeff Zucker is set to take over as president of CNN, the fate of the cable news network is an open question. In a Sunday discussion about the transition, CNN media critic Howard Kurtz and his guests passed over the network's left-of-center reporting, implying instead that CNN is somehow devoid of bias compared to its primary competitors, MSNBC and Fox News.

During a segment on "Reliable Sources," panelist David Zurawik -- media critic for the Baltimore Sun newspaper -- asserted that the news organization is "the nation's last bastion of television journalism."

The former reporter for the Washington Post stated that Zucker, the former president and chief executive officer of NBC Universal, "will be up against the cautious culture of an Atlanta-based network that for years and years has stuck to a traditional news format."

Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs and another guest on Sunday's program, said that he cares about CNN "partly because of what it means to news and journalism" and what it means to the nation.

"This country needs this information through a broadcaster talking nationally and globally," he added.

The future of the network is important to the broadcast news industry, which is critical to the political health of the nation.

After noting that the network needs to make money since cable news is also a business, Kurtz asserted that "as a hard news network," CNN "does not attract loyal viewers when there is no breaking news in the way its cable news competitors can."
Posted by:Fred

#7  I don't watch CNN at airports. They are Pravda without the prava. I use my wifi and read the Burg.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2012-12-04 23:20  

#6  Breaking News: No one watches CNN unless they are forced to at an airport.
Posted by: Airandee   2012-12-04 20:35  

#5  I go to Comedy Central for my news.
Posted by: Skidmark   2012-12-04 17:56  

#4  CNN has the ability to be the only real news agency. If the panel is worried about them and concider FOX and MSNBC real news, then I see this as a good sign. CNN got slammed in the early 80's for being 24 hours a day. Now they are too traditional? If CNN pulls of being news without the wild bias I will become a fan.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2012-12-04 11:45  

#3  The panelists seem to be the only ones worrying about CNN's fate. A novel idea might be to report the news and scrap the ideology that currently goes with CNN reporting and other MSM cable networks that aren't doing well. The big wigs should try to be honest and ask themselves: "Why aren't we doing well?"
Posted by: JohnQC   2012-12-04 09:51  

#2  When the numbers don't add up, make more epicycles to define your universe.

Or try the strategy that brought us New Coke, another brilliant idea out of Atlanta.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2012-12-04 09:17  

#1  SO, is the bottom line that the Public doesn't buy their stuff anymore? Or in other words, their news has little sense to common ordinary people and they don't listen or pay good money for what CNN has to sell?

Traditional Leave it to Beaver news just doesn't have much appeal?

Well there you go.
Maybe they should hand out pictures of Obama gazing at the Moon or Coupons for Obama's next book...about Obama.
That might work.

maybe the Beaver should ask Wally.
Posted by: Threater Flusoper9823   2012-12-04 04:46  

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