Last night the Daily Show devoted a segment with the always funny John Oliver to the sad state of investigative journalism these days, specifically how news organizations like CNN are cutting back on funding for investigative reports in favor of gimmicks like holograms and debate shows that are produced cheaply. It centers around former CNN foreign investigative correspondent Kaj Larsen, who was recently laid off and now works as a personal trainer and a consultant on The Newsroom to pay his bills.
God help us.
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So sad, but so true. Capitalism does not go hand in hand with a well informed populace. At least not the American version of it.
The Daily Show has ripped on CNN a lot for its low ratings. As far as I can tell, their ratings are the direct result of the rise of the personality-driven propaganda machines like FOX News and MSNBC. The Daily Show also spend a lot of time ripping on FOX for being so biased, but that’s sadly what drives the ratings.
So you can’t have it both ways unfortunately. Whenever CNN gets bashed for low rating I cringe. Because that network on the whole is the least biased, and they used to have a strong focus on world events. Again, the American public doesn’t care which really sucks because it sucks hearing only about budget debates in Washington when there are major issues going on around the world.
Actually you can have it both ways; if all news agencies were force to actually report the news then what CNN does would not lead to low ratings since ratings would be all about the quality of the journalism.
However, I understand the point you were making.
Just because CNN is the least biased out of the 3 big cable news networks doesn’t mean it’s still not doing a shitty job. You can absolutely have it both ways. Is it too much to ask that CNN be as unbiased as possible but also not be completely incompetent at presenting news?
CNN needs to be basically the HBO/AMC of cable news. Forget about massive ratings and build your brand as high-quality, non-propaganda journalism.
I think that would help more in the long run. Appealing to the lowest common denominator has ruined their reputation, and they’re still in a very distant third place.
I think everyone is entirely missing the point of this article.
There is an HBO show called The Newsroom! Who knew? And (and this is a key point here, pay close attention) the Colbert Report went ON LOCATION and interviewed actors of The Newsroom. Thus proving that investigative journalism is not dead.
Or maybe it was the Daily Show, I fell asleep during the piece because investigative journalism is boring and kills ratings.