Surely you understand the difference between “balanced” or “middle-of-the-road” news programming and dull and banal news programming, of which CNN is the supreme leader. Leaving aside the other two cable news networks, CNN has terrible problems understanding 21st-century ways of being and knowing, offering the insipid (John King), the blank (Wolf Blitzer), and the vapid (Don Lemon) as, apparently, beacons of “objectivity.” But objectivity is meaningless without directed, forceful, and constant engagement with ideas and their consequences.
]]>These news personalities (sic), alas, come up short. And the attempts to connect with an audience via twitter, instant polls, and viewer-submitted “iReports” are just embarrassing.
As always, The Daily Show gets this right, mocking MSNBC and Fox for their absurd partisan caterwauling and CNN for its inability to find the story or push through the banalities of providing “balance.” Stewart and company (especially Colbert) exposed the empty style of furrowed-brow, “concerned” journalism (think Anderson Cooper) more than a decade ago.CNN is the network that hides Fareed Zakaria and, for “edge,” gives us Rick Sanchez and Campbell Brown. Oy!