Posts tagged cnn

ccindecision:

Something weird has happened to The Most Trusted Name in News.

Has something weird happened? Has the race to break news scraped the bottom of the barrel yet (of course not, there’s a long way to go).

In my inconsequential opinion, CNN has been one of the newsroom to most embrace technology and social media in recent years and as a result it is also the one suffering most from the process of pulling hard fact from rumour and hearsay as the time to do this work diminishes in the newsroom.

ccindecision

Driving Stoned, CNN is on it

With legalization in effect in Colorado and Washington, CNN creates a “marijuana smoking lab”, gets volunteers high and tests their driving skills.

Journalism.

As a public service.

We’d like to have been in the editorial meeting when this story was pitched.

shortformblog:

Looks like Piers Morgan found found a voice louder than his: Morgan had Alex Jones on his show because Jones was one of the loonies behind that petition to get Piers deported for using his First Amendment rights to criticize the Second Amendment. (The White House responded last night, by the way.) Say what you will about Alex Jones, but I would watch this every single night, CNN, just because it’s so craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy. How crazy? Well, at the airport, he wouldn’t take his shoes off.

FJP: Was going to post this this morning with something along the lines of, Piers Interviews Alex Jones, Insanity Ensues.

It doesn’t stop here. If you dipping your toes into the conspiracy is your thing, hit up Jones’ Inforwars site for a follow up video.

In it, Jones and his video producer are holed up in their NYC hotel room talking about how Bloomberg’s “mafia” (read: the NYPD) are monitoring him, and if it’s reported he’s been killed in some sort of gang or drug violence, the truth will be revealed.

Yes, I spent too much time up last night going through it all. — Michael

Alex Jones, creator of "Deport Piers Morgan" petition has his moment on CNN

As one of FJP’s British contributors, it pains me to say that Piers Morgan has performed a masterclass here.

Some debates are great because you allow the person you’re arguing with the room to blow up and personify your own argument and this is what Piers has done with Alex Jones.

Media Criticism Via Adam Schweigert.

Media Criticism

Via Adam Schweigert.

CNN Shares Ambassador Stevens Personal Journal

Last night I was watching CNN and Anderson Cooper said something that made me think, “Did he just say what I think he said?!”. The transcript is as follows:

On Wednesday of this week, we reported that a source familiar with Ambassador Stevens’ thinking said in the months before his death, Ambassador Stevens talked about being worried about what he called the never-ending security threats in Benghazi.

We also reported that the ambassador specifically mentioned the rise in Islamic extremism, the growing Al Qaeda presence in Libya and said he was on an Al Qaeda hit list. The information for that report, like all of CNN’s reporting, was carefully vetted. Some of that information was found in a personal journal of Ambassador Stevens in his handwriting.

We came upon the journal through our reporting and notified the family. At their request, we returned that journal to them. We reported what we found newsworthy in the ambassador’s writings. A reporter followed up on what we found newsworthy, as I said, in the ambassador’s writings.

I wrote my brother, Michael, the following:

if i just heard Anderson Cooper correctly, on his show, talking about libya, he cited that Christopher Stevens had security fears. Then AC said one of the CNN sources for Christopher Stevens thinking prior to his death was his personal journal, found by CNN, evidently read through, and then returned to the family. AC kept making it clear that they’re only reporting things that are “newsworthy” from the personal journal they found of a dead man. Still, WTF?? it’s ok to read through the dudes journal, and then report on what it said, but only “newsworthy” things found in it??? and then returned to the family, so all is ok for reading the dead guys journal that they found at the site and sharing with their audience.

markcoatney: In which a single statement explains so, so much. FJP: Wolf, being Wolf, and totally unaware of it.

markcoatney:

In which a single statement explains so, so much.

FJP: Wolf, being Wolf, and totally unaware of it.

producermatthew: So this just happened on CNN. FJP: Will Ferrell & Zack Galifianakis respond. Oh my.

producermatthew:

So this just happened on CNN.

FJP: Will Ferrell & Zack Galifianakis respond. Oh my.

Good Effing Grief Via Andrew Sullivan: This very connection prompted CNN to ask [David] Gergen to do some reporting on Bain. And - surprise! - Gergen simply ignores the key evidence on the table: Romney’s own sworn testimony that he kept involved in Bain activities and attended Bain company board meetings and remained CEO, sole owner and chairman of Bain all the way through till 2002. If you own a company, benefit from its profits, and are paid a salary, declaring that you had left it is an untrue SEC filing. Which is a felony. Good effing grief, indeed.

Good Effing Grief

Via Andrew Sullivan:

This very connection prompted CNN to ask [David] Gergen to do some reporting on Bain. And - surprise! - Gergen simply ignores the key evidence on the table: Romney’s own sworn testimony that he kept involved in Bain activities and attended Bain company board meetings and remained CEO, sole owner and chairman of Bain all the way through till 2002. If you own a company, benefit from its profits, and are paid a salary, declaring that you had left it is an untrue SEC filing. Which is a felony.

Good effing grief, indeed.

Everyone Slow Down, Redux Edition

This is an update to our post earlier this morning about slowing down, digesting and getting things right before rushing to report.

CNN didn’t and instead ran banner headlines on its site about the Supreme Court striking down the individual mandate.

Fox too but, well, somehow that’s less surprising.

How Low Can CNN Go

I don’t like posting about cable news. The target is too large. The critiques are better done elsewhere.

Besides, the mock outrage over irrelevant political foibles, the faux debates about important issues masked as “balanced” because political operatives trade the day’s partisan talking points, and the hyping of every item in the daily news cycle as BREAKING, tires my head.

But one thing that goes largely unsaid is just how boring and irrelevant it can be.

In a recent piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, Michael Massing writes:

More than anyone else, Wolf Blitzer is the face of CNN today. On June 7, he made a splash with a long interview with Bill Clinton in which the former president tried to explain away his earlier comments about Romney’s sterling business record and the need to extend the Bush tax cuts. In addition to the standard political questions, Blitzer asked him about his diet, told him he looked great, seconded Clinton’s comment that he hopes to be around for a lot longer, and asked him about his daughter Chelsea. Noting that he had recently seen her at a Kennedy Center event, Blitzer said that, watching her eyes, “I saw the best of Bill Clinton and the best of Hillary Clinton. You’ve probably seen that as well. I wonder if you’d want to talk a little bit about that.” Remarkably, Clinton said he was very proud of his daughter. For the rest of the day and into the next, CNN shamelessly milked the interview, playing snippets over and over accompanied by more commentary.

Seeking a respite, I tuned in to Piers Morgan at 9 p.m., only to find that his first guest was Wolf Blitzer, talking about his interview with Clinton! After a while, Morgan finally moved on, to an “exclusive” interview with author and transgender advocate Chaz Bono in which he asked how much “the fact that you decided to become a man” contributed to his break-up with his girlfriend.

Massing rightly points out that CNN International is pretty good. And the reason it’s pretty good is because its competition isn’t FOX and MSNBC but the BBC. It has to be smarter. It has to go more in depth. It has to move beyond news as entertainment and the vapidity that is our daily, domestic cable news fare.

And it does so. Too bad we can’t get more of that here. — Michael

Michael Massing, Columbia Journalism Review. Dumb and dumber: How far can CNN sink?

Video: John Stewart on CNN’s recent wall-to-wall coverage of England’s Diamond Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth.

Things You Can Do That You Never Used To Via Archive.org: For over a decade, CNN (Cable News Network) has been providing transcripts of shows, events and newscasts from its broadcasts. The archive has been maintained and the text transcripts have been dependably available at transcripts.cnn.com. This is a just-in-case grab of the years of transcripts for later study and historical research. So if you can’t get enough of whatever it is they’re trying to do in the Situation Room, a one gig tarball of text is waiting for your download. H/T: Flowing Data

Things You Can Do That You Never Used To

Via Archive.org:

For over a decade, CNN (Cable News Network) has been providing transcripts of shows, events and newscasts from its broadcasts. The archive has been maintained and the text transcripts have been dependably available at transcripts.cnn.com. This is a just-in-case grab of the years of transcripts for later study and historical research.

So if you can’t get enough of whatever it is they’re trying to do in the Situation Room, a one gig tarball of text is waiting for your download.

H/T: Flowing Data

CNN’s Branded News Segments

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart breaks down CNN’s branded news segments (i.e.: Political Pop, No Talking Points, Rapid Fire, Gut Check, Endpoint) and the lack of editorial judgment that seems to go into them. 

Stewart:

CNN appears to believe that the key to revitalizing the network is creating branded news segments within the news. Which brings us to our news segment: Why? Most of your segment titles have no bearing on the content within the segment.

For example, Street Level is supposedly a round-up of what is happening on the street. Stewart takes us through a few sound Street Level stories—a crime story, food safety, puppies—and then, for some reason, a paraplegic woman bungee jumping.

I’m not against news organizations having fun, having more cheeky, playful segments. Knock yourselves out. It’s cute, it’s clever, as long as the Facetime segment title isn’t randomly misapplied.

When you have all these segments you have to apply some editorial discretion when you use them. 

Best example: Rock Star of the day. I won’t say more. Watch the video. It  illuminates an unfortunate truth, but it’s funny enough to make your day. —Jihii

CNN takes on slavery using InDesign In a really cool departure from what they normally do, CNN has just released an online article filled with slideshows, videos and sidebars focusing on slavery in the African country of Mauritania. Made in the interactive document-making program Adobe InDesign, the article looks more like a PDF than the usual CNN article we’re used to. H/T: Nieman Lab

CNN takes on slavery using InDesign

In a really cool departure from what they normally do, CNN has just released an online article filled with slideshows, videos and sidebars focusing on slavery in the African country of Mauritania. Made in the interactive document-making program Adobe InDesign, the article looks more like a PDF than the usual CNN article we’re used to.

H/T: Nieman Lab