How did CNN go to shit?

I live in the USA and can't find the news...local news is even worse. I watch Al Jazeera America.

You know it's bad when Larry Ming looks good in retrospect!

Ted Turner got forced out by Gerald Levin after the Time Warner takeover.

If people are honest, it's not just CNN. It's just American news these days. It's all infotainment and subpar "reporters" who are more interested in being on television than they are in crafting the skill of a broadcast journalist. Brian Williams sums up the kind of people who go into broadcast journalist these days.

I've always been a news junkie since I was very young so I started watching local news since about 8yo. My local news are filled with wannabe celebrity than actual reporters.

Don't know what happened to the state of American culture these days. I read most of my news online now. There are still old-school print journalists out there and those are the people I read from.

CNN discovered during the OJ Simpson circus that sensationalism sells. It all started to go downhill after that.

Aiming at the lowest common denominator in an attempt to win ratings. And in the U.S., the LCD is very low indeed.

You look at the attempts to improve NBC and CNN and you notice that the executives always think the answer is something other than just reporting the news better.

I would watch any news station that went back to just fucking reporting the news. The early days of CNN were the halcyon days of TV journalism.

When CNN replaced Aaron Brown with then rising star Anderson Cooper, it was the beginning of the end. That was around the time I stopped watching CNN regularly. I though AC was just the flavor of the month. Granted, AB is very old school and millenials would probably find him "boring," but he was a serious broadcaster and delivered the nightly news accordingly.

As mentioned above, OJ is the dividing line. I was a real CNN junkie up to that point. OJ broke me of the habit.

For approximately a year they simply set up up a camera outside a courthouse in Los Angeles and let the rest of the world slide. And the high ratings told them that was all that was being asked of them. To this day they haven't recovered their mojo.

Go to their Wiki page. Compare current anchors to former anchors and reporters. It speaks volumes.

CNN International is just as unwatchable. I feel embarrassed for their reporters and anchors.

How much of the blame Is on the public and what they want to watch?

If OJ is really the dividing line, chances are CNN saw something in their ratings for the sensationalized stories at the time (OJ, William Kennedy Smith, Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill, etc.).

CNN was never as good as when Lynn Russell was on. She was the best!

So great that it was faking shit left and right?

Most of TV news is basically: Stuff you read on the internet yesterday plus 4 talking heads. Unless they really give us an in depth look at something it's really just BS. As long as they are chasing ratings and profits, news on the teevee is doomed. As someone said up thread, it's really just a bunch of Ted Baxters competing for airtime.

Ted Turner selling it and losing control was the end for me. It was such a great network in the mid to late 80s

There has to be a isolated bubble in which anyone thought that putting Soledad O'Brien on camera was a good idea.

Brianna Keilar did a good job on State of the Union.

Repetitive and Boring.

I am very interesting in Ukraine. CNN, in my opinion did a decent job, on the Malaysian plane crash in Eastern Ukraine last summer. But, that's it. Lemon and Cuomo made fools of themselves during Ferguson. CNN did a lousy job on the recent Amtrak train crash too.

Partly it was due to Ted losing control but mostly the news direction of CNN went to shit when CNN Executive Ed (NOT TED) Turner left the network. He had been there from the very beginning.

R21 - "CNN did a lousy job on the recent Amtrak train crash too." How so?

Not worth figuring out why. Just turn it off, and bravely step into a brave new world without 24/7 cable news.

In the middle of the 90s they turned the news dept over to a southern "corporate" type who gave us watered down Fox News.

r4, who are the print journalists you read?

1. Ted Turner losing control. 2. The OJ Simpson Trial

Anderson Cooper singlehandedly turned it into an infotainment channel.

They are clueless. They have Ashley whatever her name is hosting a legal show. She is not even a lawyer, last time I checked?!!

That is why. no brainer. dumb shit all day long.

If you want to know what's going on, your cable network better provide BBC or some other foreign news source. Journalism is a lost art here in the U.S.

R28 - it's not all Anderson's fault.

Wolf Blitzer

They lie their faces off?

Nobody watches this degraded and degrading junk anymore. THANK GOD

[quote]OJ is the dividing line. I was a real CNN junkie up to that point. OJ broke me of the habit.

I agree. It broke me of the habit of watching news AND broke me of the habit of watching TV. The OJ crap was on gossip shows like ET, talk shows, special news shows, -- you couldn't get away. About a month after the Bronco chase, I quit cable and unplugged the TV until after both OJ trials were finished.

Going back to TV, I never watched more than an hour a day, if I watched at all. Haven't had a cable bill in years - thanks to OJ coverage.

I paved the way for Connie Chung and Julie Chen and did either of those cunts ever thank me? Fuck no!

No mention of their horrendous spinoff network HLN?

Wolf Blitzer is not "reputable."

Blame Fox. The other networks are flummoxed by its success and have tried to copy it. What they cannot comprehend is that Fox does well because all of us Conservatives watch it for the slant (right,) not the legs & blondies.

OP, any independent source will tell you that CNN still maintains its tradition of excellence and is a leader in the field of broadcast news.

So, piss off mate.

lol I love it these fools so focused on a football player they destroyed themselves. LMAO!

But if CNN were to import hot blonde big-tit babes as anchors for all their shows the ratings would go back up

Watch the movie NETWORK. That will give you the real answer to what happened.

Whoever dies with the most retarded fans wins!

Fuck you all. Jim Acosta, Nick Valencia, Evan Perez, Miguel Marquez and Ivan Castro have saved this shit network.

Already mentioned but I'll chime in...

Ted Turner's ouster & the OJ coverage that was nearly nonstop for a year.

News as entertainment, or infotainment.

"Black!! What's it like to be BLACK! RACISM in America! BLACK people mistreated! BLACK!! New CNN poll/study/production room survey says BLACK Americans suffer more that anybody on Earth, in Human History! The plight of BLACK FARMERS! How BLACK HAIR SALONS are mistreated by white women who never go there, tune-in for our special report! BLACK in New York! BLACK in America! OMG BLACK BLACK BLACK!!!"

....and that's how it happened OP. What HuffingtonPost has become with women, CNN became with the black coverage nearly a decade ago. Exploitive, race-bating, shit-stirring, false-reporting bullshit to keep a news crawler running and a 'BREAKING NEWS' banner up in hopes all those monitors at gyms and and community centers around the country would stay tuned-in.

R5 nails it.

R45 good points also they dragged stories to death and become fixated on one story and its 24 hours. OH how they carried on in Baltimore... CNN is king of sensationalism.

CNN's coverage of the missing airline hit a new low for TV journalism. Don and his black hole theory of what could have happened. Jesus fuck.

R45 Go back to Breitbart.

CNN hasn't always been shit?

You should be able to tune in to NPR and get PBS Newshour every night wherever you can get CNN. They're real news.

Try harder, chilluns.

NPR and BBC cover the news without any sensationalism.

I blame the Vanderbilt boy.

I think I need to set up a table outside CNN to peddle my FABULOUS Tejano recordings, just in case.

Discography: Jean LeGrand

Tirano (CBS International, 1987) Jean Le Grand (EMI Latin, 1990) It Takes 2 Duets (EMI Latin, 1991) Enamorada (EMI Latin, 1992) Todo Para Ti (EMI Latin, 1994)

CNN is just fine, OP. She sends her love.

[quote]There has to be a isolated bubble in which anyone thought that putting Soledad O'Brien on camera was a good idea.

Please take your racist hate speech elsewhere.

CNN cares more about ratings than being a good news network these days. When they have 1 big story that happens (ex: the missing Malaysian Airlines flight) they'll focus solely on that for weeks! I remember last year that instead of even mentioning other stories, they would actually waste time on air with segments featuring aviation experts who would sit around and offer THEORIES about what COULD HAVE happened. Whatever happened to a news network only reporting on facts? That was the most pathetic display I have ever seen from a news network and I used to enjoy watching CNN.

The other thing is CNN's extreme overuse of the phrase "Breaking News". They use it so much that the term has lost its meaning. No, it's not breaking news when someone involved in a scandal "speaks". I remember last year they actually had "Breaking News: Obama Speaks" and I was wtf. CNN has abused the term.

Also, some of the anchors/hosts are just pathetic. Wolf Blitzer is a damn fool with the idiotic questions he asks. SNL does a very accurate imitation of him.

Brooke Baldwin is only slightly better and she can't pronounce her "e"s (pronouncing them all as "i"s).

Then they have people on there with shows such as Anthony Bourdain! WTF is he doing on a news network? That spoiled, faux-rebellious jerk should only be on the Travel Channel.

Now CNN is airing a fucking series "High Profits" about a marijuana mogul. Why does a news network have a tv series? It's supposed to be about NEWS.

R45 is on point. At one point during the Ferguson riots they were actually counterprogramming with some documentary about how hard it is to be a black criminal in jail. Worse than Soviet propaganda.

Bending over backwards to try to not appear as part of the "liberal elite media" can easily make a network look like a throng of mindlessly unanalytical and uncritical anti-intellectual numbskulls.

That's how.

Fuck CNN. Hell, I remember when even Geraldo Rivera was a cool, cutting edge journalist.

The Time Warner merger destroyed a lot of things. First, after buying out Lorimar and bringing the tasteless philistine Les Moonves into the mix, WB Television foisted [italic]Friends[/italic] on us and used the publications they owned to hype the shit out of this TV equivalent of The Emperor's New Clothes. And [italic]ER[/italic] was just [italic]St. Elsewhere[/italic]-lite. Adding AOL to the mix made it worse. And it was then that MAD Magazine sold out by including actual ads, not just parodies of them! They never would have done that if Bill Gaines were still alive. I quit reading because of that, and to this day I refuse to allow Entertainment Weekly, AKA the Friends Fan Club Newsletter, into my house.

At least they have done a good job of preserving and restoring much of the film and TV library they inherited from Turner.

They are owned by a large corporation who only cares about ratings.

Americans like to listen to bullshit about how great America is...therefore, more of a right wing slant that will continue.

If we ever want to hear the truth, we'll have to search for it.

They don't care about ratings. They care about bundling deals. If it were all about ratings CNN and MSNBC would both have been off the air years ago. A repeat of Andy Griffith on ME TV gets more viewers than any CNN program.

[quote]A repeat of Andy Griffith on ME TV gets more viewers than any CNN program.

Because people want to see police doing something other than randomly killing people of color.

R56 - "Wolf Blitzer is a damn fool with the idiotic questions he asks. SNL does a very accurate imitation of him."

Yes! How the adequate have fallen.

Ironically, RT is considered one of the most objective source for news by many with over 700 million viewers worldwide. The neocon PTB are none to pleased about this.

The CNN website is just horrible now. Gigantic picture of some 'news story' taking up the whole page. Short notes that pass as an actual news article. Disgusting.

Huffington Post is worse. I don't know where to get real news anymore. The doctor I work with brings in the Wall Street Journal (paper) for me to read but it's so biased and is getting as bad as the other newspapers (celebrity stories). New York Times is so left wing (and this is from me, a liberal) I can't stand to read it anymore.

" New York Times is so left wing (and this is from me, a liberal) I can't stand to read it anymore."

R66 - If you think the NYT is so left wing, you are not a liberal.

NYT is centrist. WashPo is the great liberal paper.

WashPo is no longer a great liberal paper.

Well, it used to be. I'm hoping it convalesces.

When they started producing those Being Black In America specials every week with Soledad O'Brian, they lost many viewers. Cause all of that shit is a myth and a bore.

Why did I laugh heartily when I read "OJ is the dividing line"? I mean, I don't doubt it in the least - it's just funny to think that that humongous, farcical trainwreck - which has the simple umbrella term of "OJ" - was the ruination of civilization. [R10]

The Dancing Itos ruined the world!!

CNN was awful on Ferguson and Baltimore. They stirred up trouble to increase ratings and engaged in much exageration and distortion. These bimbo and flamboyant anchors and reporters deliver loads of biased, misleading, unprofessional, and emotional comments. Showing objectivity and intellectual perspectives are beyond them. They'll dwell on a plane crash for many days, ignoring other news. Then they drop the plane crash stories suddenly without closure. Fox is little more than GOP TV run by Roger Ailes and part of the Rupert Murdoch world media empire. And all this is suppose to represent freedom of the press? It's simply corporate propaganda delivered to inflame and entertain, lamely.

In all fairness to CNN, they are so blessed by our lord Jesus to have Carol Costello! She really sets the standard and is beyond Peabody-worthy!

U hope you are being sarcastic R74

Are Fox News anchors posting on this thread?

And let us not forget the Dali Lama of airplane crash porn, Richard Quest! What would air disasters or late night parks be without him? Seriously! I don't feel my fellow posters are being fair to our national treasure, our beloved...CNN.

It has gone to shit.

But I love that cute-ass Ian Lee (who's reporting from Egypt currently).

And that Latino bear Ed Lavandera...Woof! !Me gustan los osos!

Why is CNN is wetting their pants over the 70's right now? Last nite, there was a CNN quiz show hosted by Anderson Cooper and the other anchors as contestants. I saw a promo for some Tom Hanks produced 70's documentary they will be showing. Right now, Carol Costello is interviewing an unrecognizable Jimmy Walker about Good Times. Are the 70's a hot topic right now?

Michael Evans grew up to be a handsome man. What's his story? I want him.

I was in Europe for the past three weeks and it was very refreshing to watch CNN International on the hotel television. There was very little tabloid coverage and I saw Christiane Amanpour get more screen time in those three weeks overseas than in the last three years on the US counterpart. I saw no coverage of the Duggar's and there was limited coverage of CAITLYN. We are basically screwed in the US if we want to see real news.

This is for you, R72. And yes, I'd fuck Kato Kaelin.

CNN anchors exploit allegedly racially-charged police encounters, using highly opinionated and biased guest commentators who know little about the details of the given incident, were not witnesses, and assume the police are guilty in each and every incident. And how they interview families is terrible, trying to force expressed emotions. Then in cases where a policeman is killed in the line of duty, they act totally dismayed and exploit that. CNN tries to inflame situations for viewership enhancement and ratings. CNN should be getting some bills for their roles in the damages created.

And this "Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer, is trying to present every news item as a new crisis. One has to turn to the BBC or Al-J, to get any substantive international news.

I always find that Wolf Blitzer and others never really ask the types of questions that I and other viewers are thinking. There seems to be a reluctance to ask any guest a question that could be embarrassing for them. They need to ignore the title/position of the person they're interviewing, and go for the jugular when wanting answers. And stop trying to make stars out of their anchors (Anderson Cooper, comes to mind). There's also too much soft news (entertainment/sports/etc), that takes up valuable air time, when an interview about an important topic could be expanded. There's also too much repetition of news stories, when other news stories could be covered.

[quote] How much of the blame Is on the public and what they want to watch?

If there was a serious public demand for straightforward, hard-hitting journalism, the networks would bend over backwards to try to meet that demand (because it would be in their economic self-interest). But there isn't. Most Americans today don't want to be informed. They don't give a damn about world affairs. They don't want to have to think. All you have to do is look at the Internet. When the web became popular, everyone said, "This is great. Now, Americans can get their news from the BBC and learn about different cultures, etc." But instead, people use the Internet to watch cute cat videos and take selfies. And CNN has to compete with that. CNN not only has to compete with Fox and MSNBC but with Facebook and Buzzfeed and everything else on the web. So everything is dumbed-down.

For the most part, in the US, young, saleable demos won't watch hard news with actual journalistic integrity. Nor will older folks accustomed to having their own world view reflected back at them (i.e. Fox 'News').

I was hopeful that CBSN, CBS's new 24/7 internet news channel would embody the old school values I associate with their news department. Instead, it's fluffy, lightweight, and features happy talk presenters . It's really sort of awful.

It was good when I was there!

CNN is an entertainment show. It presents opinion as fact. It sensationalizes non stories. It is an insult to real journalism. Sign of the times. MSM is in a downward spiral.

I haven't had tv in ten years and I can't believe how bad it all is - CNN, but all of it. Murder obsessed. Women reporters have to dress and act like bimbos. Nothing serious or intelligent. CNN lingering on a murder story as long as possible, until the next one then they linger on that as long as possible until the next one....etc

I've been coming to America for the last 30+ years.

Even as a child I was astonished at how poor ALL of your television news was and I've seen nothing to change my mind. Sensationalist, tabloid, hugely dumbed down, narrow-focused, insular, decisive, biased and tawdry entertainment masquerading as news.

Don't get me wrong. I love America. I just felt you were shortchanged by really bad news provision.

CNN is the reason we have this 24 hour news cycle.

CNN has very little news now.

alex witt, is that her name? old broad with big blonde tranny wig.....she made it go 2 shite