Rick Lockridge, worked at CNN
I’m a former CNN correspondent, and I could answer this question in much greater detail than you’d ever want to read, but I’ll give you the short answer. CNN under Ted Turner (no journalist he, but he understood what he wanted CNN to be and what it needed to be) was a place where, when you first walked in the door, you were told „there are no stars here, only news.“ And the staff believed that. For me, after wandering in the wilderness of local TV news for years, it was a great feeling to join a group of folks who (by and large) only really wanted to do the f**ing news.
I covered AOL as part of my beat (technology), and when the „merger“ news hit, I knew it was going to be bad news for CNN. AOL, which was acquiring CNN, was all about acquiring customers, refusing to let them leave, and shaking every coin from their pockets. CNN, on the other hand, had a service culture; we really thought we were doing good in the world, even if at times we felt like we were just a bunch of firefighters hanging around the firehouse, bored, waiting for the alarm to ring so we’d have something important to do. It was going to be a big–a catastrophic–clash of workplace cultures. And it was. Managers started to try to please their new AOL overlords instead of focusing on the basic blocking-and-tackling of newsgathering. CNN started listing. (Wags would insist it was to the left, but that’s another discussion; I have some strong views about that, too).
At the same time, Fox News was really starting to kick CNN’s butt all over the place. And how were they doing that? Well, some of it was the whole „preaching to the choir“ thing, where the audience is really into you because you’re telling it what it wants to hear, but Fox’s execs also understood that the „anti-Ted“ approach (making your anchors the stars INSTEAD of the news, and finding the most charismatic and (sometimes) polarizing anchors out there and encouraging them to say whatever they felt like saying on TV – that such an approach would make CNN seem boring by comparison.
CNN eventually reacted to this by trying the same strategy–that’s what made possible abominations like the hiring of Rick Sanchez and Nancy Grace. (I’ve said it many times: any network that would employ a person like Nancy Grace doesn’t really want to be taken seriously, and shouldn’t be). And don’t even get me started on Piers Morgan!
(Prior to this era, there were only a couple of CNN reporters who could get away with playing by their own rules: Christiane Amanpour, because she had more balls than any man at CNN, and Candy Crowley, who inexplicably then (as now) could get away with saying any crazy shit–one hundred percent opinion, zero percent objective fact–and get away with it).
Even anchors who are smart and capable (Don Lemon comes to mind) are today allowed (encouraged?) to speak their minds freely during news broadcasts, often with embarrassing results. If I were to watch CNN today (unlikely), I would doubtless soon find myself yelling at the TV: „Stop telling me what you think, and start telling me what you KNOW!“ And even the estimable Anderson Cooper is guilty of this (you could, in fact, make the argument that he’s the CNN anchor who started it; I can’t count the number of times I’ve been put off by Anderson’s efforts to pre-digest the news and „explain“ it to me.
Note to news anchors everywhere: nobody thinks you’re all that smart. We know you’re mostly just reading the words from a TelePrompTer; words that were written by someone brighter than you, probably; in between your Tourette’s-like fits of opinionating to make yourself seem interesting to viewers. You know what would make you interesting? If you were credible.
Not to excuse the exec producers and line producers from any responsibility for the debacle that is today’s CNN; no, there is also some truly terrible news judgment at play (see Anonymous’s astute Flight 370 comments above). But the main reason CNN doesn’t work is because it can’t remember what it used to be and what it needs to be. I say bring back Ted Turner (who we’d occasionally see in the food court at CNN Center back in the day, wearing a rumpled suit and scuffed brown shoes; a thoroughly approachable and engaging guy) and let him kick some ass. Remind CNNers that their job is to be solid (and, alright, perhaps a little bit boring) until the shit hits the fan – and then you get going on a big story and cover it like no one else can. Don’t like the idea of being solid but boring? Well, how’s the alternative working out for ya? Not too well, as it turns out.
