Three developments with CNN over the past week have left me wondering, just what the heck is CNN thinking?
1) The first was a segment on CNN's Your Money. They ran a 120 second segment in which the host, Ali Veshi spoke with another CNN host Richard Quest as to whether people should be investing in the stock market.
What blew my mind was they started by saying that Yes the markets are rigged and manipulated, but that despite this, you HAVE to invest in stocks.
To me this is not journalism. This is not reporting the news. And if anything it is utterly and totally irresponsible of them to be making these kinds of statements.
This is different than having guests on who state an opinion and viewers know to take that opinion with a grain of salt or to go and do further research. When its the 'host' making these comments, its safe to assume that many viewers are regular viewers and feel an emotional bond or trust with the host. So when the host says to do something, there are thousands of idiots (I'm sorry, but anyone who listens to a talking head on televisions in terms of where to put their money is behaving idiotically) who will do it.
What makes this even more insane is that there are so many economic fail points coming over the next 12 months that the system could very easily crash (and do so worse than in 2008).
Why CNN would air a segment like this, which offers no value other than to try and push people to buy equities, is beyond me.
Is CNN going to compensate people who follow their 'instructions' (it's not really advice, since they are saying you HAVE to do this)? Hell no. If the markets crash CNN has no responsibility to compensate people who lose their life savings.
Totally irresponsible journalism and a surprise coming from Ali Velshi, who generally doesn't behave like this.
2) Fareek Zakaria suspected?
Fareek Zakaria, who hosts GPS on CNN, was caught plagiarizing and was suspended by CNN for one month. You can read the story over at the HuffingPost.
What I don't understand is that the plagiarism was pointless. It's not like the few sentences that were plagiarized could not have been re-worded in all of 60 seconds.
In the field of journalism plagiarism is one of the few sacred cows, you just do not ever do it.
So one of CNN's most venerated and international personalities now looks like a two-bit hack.
Totally mind boggling.
3) CNN to air Reality Shows?
CNN is apparently is looking to start airing late night talk show and other reality-show concepts according to the HuffingPost.
This is obviously in response to CNN's ratings, which are falling off a cliff.
This isn't all that shocking in that this would simply move CNN towards being more like NBC, ABC, CBS etc., a 'network' that runs all kinds of programming including the news.
Having said that though, CNN was unique in that it was originally the only 24-hour news network. But its clear that the days of associating CNN with 'the news and only the news' are coming to an end.
Corporations needs to make money, viewers drive revenue, ergo, give the viewers what they want I guess (although don't fool yourself, this will seriously diminish CNN's brand as 'news you can trust')
So there you have it, three very strange things to see coming out of CNN.
As a PR person it's a bit sad to see the news media falling so hard to the interests of corporate profits. There are so many interesting stories out there that people don't hear about (unless you read about them on various internet outlets) because the news media doesn't think such stories will generate 'mass' audience attention. And that's right now, in the future, given moves such as CNN seems to be making, it will get even harder for interesting stories to make it on the news.
It strikes me that the items above are creating a 'news' network that really no longer believes in hard journalism.
What's next? Maybe they should get a cartoon character like Peter Griffin from Family Guy to do the news. Sounds silly but hey, millions would watch.
1) The first was a segment on CNN's Your Money. They ran a 120 second segment in which the host, Ali Veshi spoke with another CNN host Richard Quest as to whether people should be investing in the stock market.
What blew my mind was they started by saying that Yes the markets are rigged and manipulated, but that despite this, you HAVE to invest in stocks.
To me this is not journalism. This is not reporting the news. And if anything it is utterly and totally irresponsible of them to be making these kinds of statements.
This is different than having guests on who state an opinion and viewers know to take that opinion with a grain of salt or to go and do further research. When its the 'host' making these comments, its safe to assume that many viewers are regular viewers and feel an emotional bond or trust with the host. So when the host says to do something, there are thousands of idiots (I'm sorry, but anyone who listens to a talking head on televisions in terms of where to put their money is behaving idiotically) who will do it.
What makes this even more insane is that there are so many economic fail points coming over the next 12 months that the system could very easily crash (and do so worse than in 2008).
Why CNN would air a segment like this, which offers no value other than to try and push people to buy equities, is beyond me.
Is CNN going to compensate people who follow their 'instructions' (it's not really advice, since they are saying you HAVE to do this)? Hell no. If the markets crash CNN has no responsibility to compensate people who lose their life savings.
Totally irresponsible journalism and a surprise coming from Ali Velshi, who generally doesn't behave like this.
2) Fareek Zakaria suspected?
What I don't understand is that the plagiarism was pointless. It's not like the few sentences that were plagiarized could not have been re-worded in all of 60 seconds.
In the field of journalism plagiarism is one of the few sacred cows, you just do not ever do it.
So one of CNN's most venerated and international personalities now looks like a two-bit hack.
Totally mind boggling.
3) CNN to air Reality Shows?
CNN is apparently is looking to start airing late night talk show and other reality-show concepts according to the HuffingPost.
This is obviously in response to CNN's ratings, which are falling off a cliff.
This isn't all that shocking in that this would simply move CNN towards being more like NBC, ABC, CBS etc., a 'network' that runs all kinds of programming including the news.
Having said that though, CNN was unique in that it was originally the only 24-hour news network. But its clear that the days of associating CNN with 'the news and only the news' are coming to an end.
Corporations needs to make money, viewers drive revenue, ergo, give the viewers what they want I guess (although don't fool yourself, this will seriously diminish CNN's brand as 'news you can trust')
So there you have it, three very strange things to see coming out of CNN.
As a PR person it's a bit sad to see the news media falling so hard to the interests of corporate profits. There are so many interesting stories out there that people don't hear about (unless you read about them on various internet outlets) because the news media doesn't think such stories will generate 'mass' audience attention. And that's right now, in the future, given moves such as CNN seems to be making, it will get even harder for interesting stories to make it on the news.
It strikes me that the items above are creating a 'news' network that really no longer believes in hard journalism.
What's next? Maybe they should get a cartoon character like Peter Griffin from Family Guy to do the news. Sounds silly but hey, millions would watch.
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