CNN stands firm against covering Benghazi, and against feeling shame
Neo-neocon, writing on the morning of Monday, May 19, 2014:
…[Trey Gowdy’s questions for the press show] how negligent and/or collusive with [the Obama] administration the press has been in covering (or rather, covering up) the Benghazi incident.
If it were possible for the press to reflect and to feel shame, Gowdy’s words would make them do that and feel that. But I’m afraid it’s not.
CNN President Jeff Zucker, speaking on the evening of Monday, May 19, 2014:
CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker on Monday said that the network probably won’t be covering the House select committee to investigate Benghazi.
“We’re not going to be shamed into it by others who have political beliefs that want to try to have temper tantrums to shame other news organizations into covering something,” he said when asked if CNN would cover the committee during an interview at a Deadline Club dinner, as recorded by Capital New York.
I’m not saying Zucker reads neo-neocon. It’s just—odd.
This, however, is beyond odd [emphasis mine]:
Zucker also addressed the network’s round-the-clock coverage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane and how CNN will approach news after the plane era.
“If I take a step back from our coverage of the Malaysian plane’s disappearance, I’m incredibly comfortable with it. I believed early on, right from the start, that it was an enormously important story…
…[N]ow that CNN’s coverage of the missing plane is winding down, Zucker said they’ll start to introduce new programming aimed at a younger audience.
“So we’re still there whenever that happens, but we’re going to supplement that with some different kind of storytelling,” Zucker said of the network’s plane coverage going forward.
What on earth is the “plane era”? And is CNN planning to become the Nickelodeon of cable news? Lastly and perhaps most importantly, what does Zucker mean by “storytelling”?
I can imagine.
Since I don’t have cable, I was already boycotting CNN.
“What on earth is the “plane era”? ”
It’s a new measurement of glacial time. An “era” is anything that a 24/7/365 “news” station covers for at least four days.
Need planes so they can fly over the slave states, where they keep their sex slaves and other workers in the mud.
If CNN wants to remain viable, it needs to focus on the truth and not ideology. It is as biased as the NYT, WP, LAT, and the AP — all of which could move to Russia without changing their reporting on stories.
We are all aware that Mr. Zucker, CNN, and the balance of the leftist propagandist known as the MSM are beyond shame. It may be somewhat new that they now acknowledge it.
What a tragedy for our country that this is true.
Hard to believe that kind of a mind has risen to the point of being head of CNN. That may explain their ratings, and it definitely explains why conservatives don’t trust main stream media anymore.
Patrick:
Only the contrary—only this kind of mind could become head of CNN. An apparatchik.
re “younger audience”
Recent Limbaugh assessment (from memory):
TV news/talk shows (Leno/Letterman/etc) are no longer about overall ratings. Rather, they are about the age 15ish to age 25ish demographic (b/c this is the age at which Americans formulate their consumer choices). Therefore, TV news/talk shows are looking for hip performers and hip content which drives comment in traditional media; cyber media; social media (thus attracting advertising dollars to television networks).
Advertising dollars used to be driven by overall ratings. Now, advertising dollars are driven by hipness, and by overall media (traditional/cyber/social) awareness and hits and commentary. Therefore, CNN’s corporate goal may not be overall ratings. If CNN remains a hip brand, then CNN is not yet failing, and remains a worthwhile asset to a media giant.
Except, CNN is failing, both in revenue and in hipness.
“Storytelling” is another name for “narrative,” isn’t it?
Also, “Complete bullshit.”
Zucker was at NBC for years before moving to CNN. Explains a lot, huh?
“Storytelling” has been a buzzword in TV news folks for a while, and it seems to indicate their desire to not only provide the facts of a given story, but to provide the context and the interpretation. In other words, turning straight news stories into editorials.
I wonder what the CNN narrative will be after Obamas revelation that he didn’t know anything about the VA scandal. He was shocked when he found out what was going on.
Sounds like Zucker has seen the Gowdy video making the rounds on the Web and he has determined not to be shamed by it – because, well basically because he has no shame.
What makes Zucker’s decision more unethical as a newsman is the escalating disintegration of Libya, which obviously ought to be the narrative context to highlight the Benghazi controversy.
The Obama admin’s suspect actions about the Benghazi killings are most likely due to a cover-up of the harmful effects of its Libya policy, the ones now screaming out, on the eve of the 2012 election. Because Obama’s Libya policy was explicitly represented as Obama’s signature counter-Bush/Iraq policy.
For the Benghazi controversy to find purchase for the public requires the contextual re-frame in the popular narrative that Bush was right on Iraq, because right now, every critique of Obama’s foreign affairs, including the Benghazi controversy, is muted by the excuse that ‘Bush was worse with Iraq’. Making that switch in the zeitgeist would transform the whole ‘storytelling’ on the Benghazi killings, Obama’s Libya policy, and his whole foreign policy record.
Ray: “I wonder what the CNN narrative will be after Obamas revelation that he didn’t know anything about the VA scandal.”
I don’t pin the VA scandal on Obama because the VA’s problems are deep set. For decades, top changes of leadership have promised and tried to reform the agency, and it hasn’t worked. More laws get added, money gets thrown, managers get shuffled, but the problems persist at ground and mid levels where the agency meets the veteran.
Rather than centralized top-down reform, the best practical hope for veterans struggling with the VA is ground-up local/regional efforts, most of all pro bono admin-legal representation of veterans by law firms and law schools, that can get at the ground and mid level problems that are not reached by top VA officials.
Of course, intractable agency shortcomings were blown up and pinned on Bush (eg, FEMA and H.Katrina), but that was activist propaganda by capable left activists. The Right presently lacks the activist capability to make a radically spun narrative stick like that to Obama.
He admits being a shill for Obama. We knew that.
Both the plane era and the car era are drawing to a close. Young adults(?) live in their parents’ basements, on the internet, and in their video games.
They only come out to vote for CNN’s Progressives flying overhead.
OK, that was juvenile, but it made me feel better. And what’s more, it raised my self-esteem without setting off any triggers.
The priests and theocrats at the top aren’t going to go down that easily.
In other words, an entire 24/7 news network is being run without adult supervision.
Well, maybe that will help their ever-declining ratings. Hey, where is Soupy Sales now that we need him?
You can’t trust your ears or the transcription.
He said, ” …plain error.”
Hence, he’s for ‘moving on.’
That’s the thing with True Believers: always in the vanguard; always to advance.
&&&
CNN is an adjunct of Big Brother.
So Zucker is paid to expand the state. In so doing, he’s a one-trick pony.
I heard on the radio today that the Democrats have finally decided to fill the slots on the committee reserved for them, i.e. they have decided to participate. It’s pretty hard to see how CNN can avoid coverage now – although I guess they’ll try.
storytelling=mind control
Zucker managed to “lead” NBC to last place. He is on his way to the same triumphant success with CNN.
@ Joe G,
I hope for Zucker’s sake there isn’t a black man waiting in the wings, a la Abramson.
Benghazi was a gun running operation, moving American weapons from Libya to Syria (to support those jihadi ‘rebels’ who have so much in common with us) via Turkey. That’s the cover-up and why I’m not holding my breath waiting for any media to start reporting on that.
Obozo just loves him some guns, loves them enough to illegally run them into other countries without Congressional approval or oversight. But Americans do not need guns to protect themselves from his Government, in typical hypocrite communist fashion.
Californians run guns to and from Mexico, to and from Oakland, but want guns confiscated from the families with children to protect.
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