Dumb and Dumber: How far can CNN sink?
In April, CNN recorded its lowest monthly ratings in more than 10 years. In May, it recorded its lowest monthly primetime ratings in more than 20 years. It’s now regularly eclipsed not only by Fox News (long the leader in cable news) but also by MSNBC.
Last year, I suggested to an editor at CJR that it do a story titled, “Why Is CNN So Bad?” It never happened, but, prompted by the network’s recent shellacking, I decided to tune in after a long hiatus. It’s even worse than I remembered.
Between 4 p.m., when Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room begins, and 11 p.m., when Anderson Cooper finishes his second hour (a replay of the first), CNN basically features a succession of babbling anchors interviewing a series of talking heads, with clips from reporters in the field occasionally spliced in. The subjects slavishly follow the national political agenda. One day, the main story was Obama’s “gaffe” that the private sector is doing fine. CNN is really into gaffes, wringing everything from them that it can. It returned to this one over and over, with dueling Democratic and Republican operatives brought on to offer their spin. When members of Congress condemned the administration for national-security leaks, CNN again beat the story into the ground with a similar cast of commentators. The network apparently thinks that having Paul Begala on to trade soundbites with Ari Fleischer makes for riveting TV.
No one outside the political establishment ever seems to make it onto the show. One day, John “Mr. Horserace” King (the anchor at 6 p.m.) had a segment on the Romney campaign’s new effort to corral Latino voters. It’s a worthy subject, and one could imagine a lively discussion among figures drawn from the Latino community. Instead, King had on Carlos Gutierrez, the Romney man in charge of the new project, who was allowed to spew Republican talking points for a seeming eternity.