People tune out CNN because CNN lies. For CNN to claim that their prime time shows are about “real journalism” and not opinion is why CNN has a problem. CNN is just as much opinion as FNC and MSNBC, they just claim it isn’t. Who wants to watch a show claiming “news” when you have Gergan, Carvile, Begalla, Friedman, Borger, et al on the air spewing their opinions regularly.

Steve,

Thank you very much for writing a critical story about CNN on the same day you rolled out their heavy sponsorship of your site. I criticized you earlier today for a perceived bias, and I recant that criticism. You proved this site does have standards regardless of who is paying the bills. A job well done.

> CNN is just as much opinion as FNC and MSNBC, they just claim it isn’t.

They don’t have a single opinion show in prime time. Guests are opinionated. Pundits and analysts have perspectives. But their hosts aren’t.

You trash CNN for having opinionated guests when that’s what the other networks have on basically 100% of the time. When Bill O’Reilly’s playing factoid games with Steve Doocy, Campbell Brown’s introducing field pieces from real reporters. There’s a huge difference in how these networks operate. Fox News is primarily based on opinion. CNN isn’t. News isn’t about opinion.

M sez: ” But their hosts aren’t….

Campbell Brown, Larry King, and Anderson Cooper? Oh yeah, they’re completely unbiased.

/sarc

Laughing out loud M. For you to claim that Brown, King and Cooper are not opinion hosts shows you don’t watch their shows. Campbell personally attacked Palin with such viciousness that McCain canceled an appearace on LKL. Anderson Cooper and his teabagging commentary demonstrates where he stands on issues, not to mention his commentary when Judd Gregg removed himself as a potential Obama cabinet member and Larry wears his liberalism on his sleeve.

CNN lies.

Straitshooter-

Editorial and advertising are completely separate here at Mediaite. That said, we love all our advertisers!

I agree with M that King and Brown effectively conceal their political leanings. I don’t know where their loyalties lie, and they are both respectable journalists.

Cooper is another story. He’s a show pony, and while the teabagging line was a low point for him, he’s really no different than Olbermann. Both men entered their networks with shoddy journalism credentials (reality TV host, nomadic sportscaster) and were designated as thes faces of their respective networks.

The difference is that Olbermann, despite his shortcomings, has validated MSNBC’s investment in him. Cooper live show loses to Olbermann’s rereun more often than not. Cooper’s not just a left-wing hack, he’s left-wing hack who is getting his clock cleaned by another left-wing hack’s leftovers.

The real journalists on prime time news: Campbell, Larry, Greta. That’s it.

This doesn’t surprise me. Normal people select various sources to watch. Whereas RightNuts gather together like insects en masse, concentrating on but one source of “satisfaction.” Nothing new there.

I can’t believe people find LARRY KING to be biased – seriously? When has he EVER shown his bias on anything? How silly!

And as for Campbell, she also does a relatively good job in presenting a straight-forward newscast.
“Tft” seems to only have ONE example where Campbell showed her ‘bias’ regarding Palin from way back last summer – does she have any other examples? Last I checked, Campbell & CNN have done over FOUR HUNDRED more “Campbell Brown” programs since that Palin incident.

(Cooper I don’t watch, but I’m not really a fan of his)

If you removed all of the Institutional TV’s that only has CNN as the ONLY News channel option the numbers are even far below this. Many Hospitals Hotels and others that provide cable TV only have CNN News available as a cable hews option. Take all of these forced viewers out of the mix and that leaves about 20 people that watch CNN by choice. I stopped watching all of the alphabet news programs (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and PBS) about 15 years ago when I came to realize that there is only one point of view on these stations and that view is the one they WANT YOU TO HAVE!!! It has little to nothing to do with the FACTS and the REAL News!

What else do you expect when CNN is airing garbage programs like ‘Black in America’ hosted by that racist fool SillyDope O’brian. This is racist filth which does nothing more than divide America. I am so sick and tired of looking at these jerks trying to destroy the United States of America in the name of political correctness.

URBusted: I don’t believe businesses and institutions are included in Nielsen ratings.

Who cares about any one’s Journalism credentials, there are so many low lying fruit stories out there with massive implications that anyone with a pulse should be dominating the ratings with little effort. Just look at Glenn Beck (full disclosure I am a big Beck fan) he has no journalism experiance, but seems the be the one leading the way these days. Acorn, Climategate, Van Jones, National Endowment of the Arts, and on and on. Guys this is not hard, the main stream media has been biased for so long, that when real journalism is actually happening people do not know what to do. Just a side note, am I seeing a banner advertisement on this story that says CNN is #1, maybe an out right lie in there advertising should be a good indicater as to why no one watches that crap network, because it is all a lie. When America finally wakes up and figures out that we are actually north of $105 Trillion in debt, the people will be coming after two groups, politicians and the media, MY PITCHFORK IS SHARP, IS YOURS.

Steve, What is with the barrage of CNN ads when I log onto Mediaite? I guess this explains the recent surge of CNN kiss-up posts on Mediaite. No amount of images will ever convice me that CNN is a trusted and unbiased news organization any longer. Frankly, anyone who would be pursuaded by this silly Andy Warhol type ad is an idiot anyways.

Campbell Brown has shown bias on many occasionns. I think most people remember when she attacked Tucker Bounds, but she also cuts off and bullies conservatives on her show on a regular basis especially when they are making a point about Obama’s incompetence.

About the ads, don’t feel too badly, even those with high ideals and ambitions sell-out under the pressure of the all mighty dollar! The one thing this add does prove is that Anderson is a lot cuter than Christiane Amanpour! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

CNN will die in the free marker until it divorces itself from its fellow members of the White House Propaganda Ministry, you know ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBS…
1. You can either become an honest member of the Fourth Estate, you know the Nations Watch Dogs?
2. Or remain mired where you are in the ratings and wait for a bailout from Waxman and the rest of the soon to be gone Progressives in Washington. Personally I don’t know how you people sleep at night…

Face it. Anyone at cnn or elsewhere would JUMP at the chance to work at Fox.
The only one I can think who left Fox was someone Gentry who left over her husband and her contract, right?
cnn grabbed her in a heartbeat.
Look at these smug pics of the cnn folks right here.
Aren’t you AWED with them?
These folks, as well as the obamanos sheep, will never get it: too smug and shameless.

Will cnn report on this?

Fistgate: Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar’s 2000 Conference Promoted ‘Fisting’ to 14 Year-Oldsby Jim Hoft
Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings founded the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in 1990. In 2007 Kevin Jennings was paid $273,573.96 as the executive director of GLSEN. Recently he was appointed by the Obama administration to run the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools in the US Department of Education.

On Friday, Scott Baker from Breitbart.TV and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted a shocking report on Obama’s deviant Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings. This report was posted at Gateway Pundit blog. Scott explained:

I was recently approached by a team of independent researchers that I have known for some time and have come to trust. They prepared this report involving ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Kevin Jennings and the organization he founded, GLSEN, and asked that I find a way to help draw attention to what they uncovered. Knowing that Gateway Pundit has followed Kevin Jennings since his appointment, as we have on The B-Cast (here, here, and here), and on Breitbart.tv (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I felt this would be an appropriate place for this report.

Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of an organization called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN started essentially as Jennings’ personal project and grew to become the culmination of his life’s work. And he was chosen by President Obama to be the nation’s Safe Schools Czar primarily because he had founded and led GLSEN (scroll for bio).

GLSEN’s stated mission is to empower gay youth in the schools and to stop harassment by other students. It encourages the formation of Gay Student Alliances and condemns the use of hateful words. GLSEN also strives to influence the educational curriculum to include materials which the group believes will increase tolerance of gay students and decrease bullying. To that end, GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books that it claims “furthers our mission to ensure safe schools for all students.” In other words, these are the books that GLSEN’s directors think all kids should be reading: gay kids should read them to raise their self-esteem, and straight kids should read them in order to become more aware and tolerant and stop bullying gay kids. Through GLSEN’s online ordering system, called “GLSEN BookLink,” featured prominently on their Web site, teachers can buy the books to use as required classroom assignments, or students can buy them to read on their own…

What we discovered shocked us. We were flabbergasted. Rendered speechless.

We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.

We knew that unless we carefully documented what we were reading, the public would have a hard time accepting it. Mere descriptions on our part could not convey the emotional gut reaction one gets when seeing what Kevin Jennings wants kids to read as school assignments. So we began scanning pages from each of the books, and then made exact transcriptions of the relevant passages on each page.

Warning: The following material is very explicit.

Scott Baker
Co-Founder, Breitbart.tv
Co-Host, The B-Cast

The material (here and here) is shocking and repulsive. The fact that Kevin Jennings’ organization GLSEN was promoting these books to children is very disturbing.

On Saturday, it was discovered that Kevin Jennings’ organization GLSEN sponsored a youth conference at Tuft’s University in March 2000. This conference was fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Safe Schools Program, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and some of the presenters even received federal money. An undercover journalist with Mass Resistance was at the conference and recorded a couple of the workshops. During one of the conference workshops an activist asks 14 year-old students, “Spit or swallow?… Is it rude?” This audio clip segment is also posted here.

That’s not all. The conference also included a workshop where GLSEN activists promoted “fisting” to 14 year olds. Here is the shocking clip where the activists promoted “fisting” to the students:

The conference included students, teachers, and local and national activists. Mass Resistance recorded this discussion at a 2000 GLSEN conference workshop for children. Here is the transcript:

If it’s all about tolerance, why is the following question necessary?
David LaFontaine, chairman of the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth and the man who is mostly responsible for the Gay Straight Alliances in Massachusetts, tells us, “We believe very strongly that all students should not be sexually active in high school.”

Woman: Question is: What’s fisting?

Man: A little known fact is that you don’t make a fist like this. When they do it, it’s like this. This is a lot easier than this. [laughter]

Woman: You work your way up to it… [unclear] one finger, two fingers, three fingers … Some people can take a hand, or they can’t take a hand.

It’s about tolerance? If Gay Straight Alliances are not about sex, why are the people who run Gay Straight Alliances telling students about fisting? What you did not see is the man leading the discussion positioning his hand and showing 14 year olds how to insert their entire hand into the rectum of their sex partner.

You just heard a public employee promote “fisting” to 14-year-olds. Kevin Jennings who ran GLSEN is now Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar.

To be clear, this post is not about supporting or not supporting gays or gay rights. This post is about the radical agenda of groups like GLSEN and activists like Kevin Jennings.

There’s more to come…

CNN has been irrelevant since the 1994 elections. One the morning after the historic elections in which the Republicans recaptured the House for the first time in 40 years the lead stories at CNN were the fact that Ted Kennedy and Chuick Robb won re-election. Newt the the Boys were well down the list. Only a Democrat though that this story was not front page and first in importance.

People aren’t stupid. They will not sit back and watch what is little more than a mouthpiece for the DNC. They share this status as a DNC mouthpiece with MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC. There just aren’t that many godless, liberal democrats to go around. It amazes me that Fox News is the only one who cares enough about the 70% or so of the public that aren’t godless, liberal democrats enough to make a news network that will cater to them.

Libs are so ridulously stupid that they would rather flame out in thr ratings rather than admit their opinions don’t reflect anything close to a majority as Fox does.

Wow, the barrage of “journalism matters” ads is pretty ironic given the subject of this post. One of CNN’s main problems is there is a discrepancy between what they claim to be, and what actually makes it to a TV near near you. Sure, they do good journalism now and then–even great journalism, but on average their broadcasts are filled with debating pundits, the latest tabloid sensation, and the non-trovery of the moment.

There is nothing wrong with a debate…as long as it is in some way accompanied by verified facts. Too often two ideologues are allowed to go at, spinning and deceiving, until (as Jon Stewart so brilliantly pointed out) the anchor simply says they “have to leave it there.” How is that journalism? I don’t think anyone expects anchors to be all-knowing, with the ability to fact-check on-the-fly during a live segment, but fact-checks are few and far between on this network.

Then when they DO perform a fact-check, it is sometimes watered down, in order to achieve the coveted “balance.” In my opinion, this fake balance can sometimes be even more detrimental than anything a partisan network can serve up. Plus it shows a lack of courage from CNN to fully do their jobs. Yes, we live in a gray world, but sometimes one side is more correct than the other.

As for the tabloid stuff, c’mon, Balloon Boy? ENDLESS Michael Jackson coverage? The list goes on and on. THIS is the most trusted name in news?

It’s a shame, out of all the cable networks, CNN by far has the best potential to be great. For some reason, they only choose to be great in short spurts. They vastly under use their international resources and too often dump real reporting for flash (holograms, anyone?). If they lived up to these ads that are currently all over my computer, I’d probably watch the network a lot more.

Ugh! What the hell is going on with the CNN wallpaper? I have eight photos of Christiane Amanpour staring me down. She looks like a pissed off Lilly Tomlin.

Ha!
Another sad and pathetic post from TfT (who is REALLY TinaFromTampa from TVNewser).
She came here, posing as TfT, but it’s obvious her convoluted logic gives her away as TinaFromTampa.
She goes after CNN because the prime time shows are NOT journalism.
Whew!
(As perceptive as my goldfish.)
Meanwhile, she insists Fox News is “fair and balanced.”
Even my goldfish knows better.
Nice try, Tuna.

Ben Linus…you are absolutely correct, an uncanny resemblance to a pissed off Lily Tomlin! That’s hilarious!

What CNN or any cable news channel needs is one far right person, one far left person
and someone in the middle for a line up and keep them reputable. No replies of
‘he is wrong because he is a crazy doodiehead!’ type responses. Wishful thinking I know
but who knows?

I’m still waiting for “Tft” to tell us how Larry King or Campbell Brown have shown their bias on their respective programs (apart from that one example Tft keeps beating to death about Tucker Bounds & Sarah Palin – from 18 months ago)

*crickets*

@TFT: get over the name thing. You could have chosen your old TVNewser name and instead you chose to use the cryptic “TFT” name instead.

@LibraBlue: I have noticed you regularly begin your comments with the word “Steve”. Are you on a first name basis with the blog’s contributor because i have yet to see him respond to you when you leave one of your inane comments?

I think Anderson Cooper is as good as ever and appeals to a wide audience. I’m guessing that his ratings began to fall when Erica Hill began to take a larger role on that show, and I believe on other shows in prime time. I, and anyone else with whom I have discussed this, find her so off-putting that I am not able to watch the show anymore.

Would any of you posters take the time and trouble to fill me in on what you think are the best in the media. All I ever hear is complaining and attacking on here. With 24/7 news outlets and blogs the job description for reporters and media has changed drastically. Material that would never have become “so called news” years ago now fills all of the empty space needed because of the changes in technology and those many hours that needs filled on TV. I do remember when CNN was the only 24/7 news channel because I was a news junkie and watched it all the time. Times have changed drastically since then.

@blueblogger:

Would any of you posters take the time and trouble to fill me in on what you think are the best in the media.

Do you mean that in a broad sense or are you looking for specific shows and journalists? At this point, the burden is unfortunately on the media consumer to determine what outlet or journalist covers a specific subject well. In my opinion, there is no one journalist/anchor/outlet who excels at everything. When their area of coverage is more narrowed (take Fareed Zakaria or Christiane Amanpour) weaknesses are much less prevalent than someone who is expected to cover literally anything. In terms of CNN, when they invest in reporting, they generally do a good job. But then there’s that empty space that you referred to, which is mostly filled with, let’s face it, crap.

This is wonderful of the foremost blogs in the area of educational activity. If I don’t come in for a couple of days, there are so many posts that it’ll require me a couple of hrs just to go all over whatsoever I omitted!! Extolment.

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