CNN Becoming The Next Fox News Channel

The Foxification Of CNN: New Management Pushes The Network Into Crazy Territory

 

In the fiercely competitive world of cable news, the players have been jockeying for position as they battle for viewers and advertisers. Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN, each with their own models of programming, seek to gain scale and influence.

Fox News, we know, has established its place as the leader in right-wing advocacy and Republican PR. MSNBC, while not a full-fledged counter to Fox, has allotted a fair portion of its programming to more liberally leaning fare. But CNN, the innovator and one-time leader in cable news, has wavered between those poles emerging as somewhat of a journalistic mutant - neither left nor right nor neutral.

The past year, however, CNN has been attempting to fashion a more recognizable persona. The shift coincides with the promotion of Ken Jautz, formerly the president of CNN's sister network, HLN. At HLN Jautz successed in raising both ratings and revenue by turning the channel into a trashy TV tabloid reliant on celebrity gossip and characters like Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck (yes, Jautz gave Beck his first job on television).

Now presiding over CNN, Jautz has brought his brash and distinctively commercial style to the network that once aspired to be a model of journalistic integrity. He is employing the same sensationalist philosophy at CNN that brought him success at HLN, along with a decidedly conservative bent. In an interview he gave after his promotion was announced Jautz delivered a tribute to Fox News and a preview of what to expect from his tenure saying that he does not believe that "facts-only" programming will work. True to his word he has endeavored to give CNN a shiny Fox-like hue and assembled a team that shares his aversion to facts.

Here are some examples of the lowlights of the Jautz era at CNN:

First and foremost, Jautz brought Glenn Beck into the CNN family saying that "Glenn's style is self-deprecating, cordial...not confrontational." That sort of delusional analysis ought to have been a red flag that disqualified Jautz from running a news network.

2) Erick Erickson, the RedState blogger who once called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a Goat-f**king child molester, became a CNN political commentator. Since his hiring he has cheered the S&P's downgrading of the U.S. credit rating and agreed with Rick Perry that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

3) CNN signed Dana Loesch, the editor of Andrew Breitbart's BigJournalism, to be a contributor. Loesch has alleged that President Obama "sided with terrorists," and she embraced the overt bigotry of notorious Islamaphobe Pamela Geller. Breitbart, of course is famous for promoting deceptively edited videos that smeared ACORN, NPR, Shirley Sherrod and even CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau. Loesch was hired by CNN after these events were widely known.

4) Jautz brought Erin Burnett over from CNBC. In her debut she broadcast a story that portrayed the protesters on Wall Street as unfocused neo-hippies that didn't understand the issues they were protesting. Burnett would have fit in well on the curvy couch of Fox & Friends where they routinely disparage the movement without ever addressing the substance of it.

5) CNN had the distinction of being the only network to air Michele Bachmann's Tea Party response to the State of the Union Address. Even Fox didn't think it was worthy of live coverage. The result is that CNN had two opposing viewpoints to the President's address, one from the GOP and one from the Tea Party which, of course, is just an affiliate of the GOP. We're still waiting for CNN to air a response from the Progressive Caucus or MoveOn.org.

6) Another new CNN political analyst is Will Cain, who CNN acquired from the ultra-conservative National Review. And if that credential isn't far enough out in right field, Cain just announced that he is joining Glenn Beck's web site, The Blaze.

7) CNN locked arms with the Tea Party to co-host a Republican presidential primary debate. By choosing Tea Party Express as their partner they embraced a dubious organization that was booted out of the Tea Party Federation due to the racist commentaries of a spokesman. It was also revealed that most of the funds raised from donations wound up in the coffers of Russo, Marsh, the Republican PR firm that founded Tea Party Express.

8) Former Fox News anchor and Bill O'Reilly fill-in, E.D. Hill, is now a CNN contributor. Hill was dumped by Fox after a segment that showed President Obama giving the First Lady a friendly fist bump and Hill called it a "terrorist fist jab."

So CNN is now employing Fox News rejects, Andrew Breitbart lieutenants, and Glenn Beck associates. They've entered into covenants with unscrupulous Tea Partyers. On the flip side, former CNN reporters Ed Henry and John Roberts are now comfortably ensconced at Fox News. The lines between CNN and Fox News are blurring to the point where the networks are becoming indistinguishable. And most of this occurred since Ken Jautz assumed the helm of CNN.

If there is one thing that American media doesn't need, it's another Fox News. The first one is already doing a stellar job of misinforming the public and advancing the agenda of the Republican Party. What's more, emulating Fox has done nothing for CNN's ratings. Why should it? Viewers who are in the market for dumbed-down histrionics, Democrat bashing, and a steady diet of right-wing falsehoods, already have a proven provider. Fox's audience has shown that they are not the least bit interested in looking for the remote that slipped under the sofa years ago. They don't even change the channel when their heroes are just a click down the dial.

Consequently, if CNN is gaining nothing from reshaping their editorial slant to mirror Fox, the only conclusion is that they are deliberately making a hard right turn because that is the direction they want to go. But this path has only resulted in their dropping to third place behind Fox and MSNBC. If CNN ever hopes to regain some of the luster of their glory days, they will need to differentiate themselves from Fox. They might want to take a stab at journalism. That would be novel in these days of advocacy tabloidism.

One more thing: This Friday News Corp is holding their annual shareholder's meeting in Los Angeles at the Fox Studios in West L.A. Rupert will be there. OccupyLA is planning on being there. It would be great if everyone else in L.A. plans to be there too.

By News Corpse | Sourced from DailyKos

Technorati Tags: CNN,Ken Jautz,HLN,Fox News,Glenn Beck,Erick Erickson,Dana Loesch,News Channels,Current Events,An American Gothic

Fox News Corp Annual Shareholder’s Meeting…

…. is scheduled for this Friday, October 21,at the  Fox Studios in West L.A

OccupyLA is planning on being there and it would great if you and your friends in the L.A. area would attend this meeting. Even if you are not in  the area and you are just looking for someplace to be, take a little trip and let your voice be heard. You are one of the 99%.

Technorati Tags: #OWS,Fox News,Channal,Fox Studios,LA,Los Angeles,OccupyLA,Politics,Current Events,An American Gothic

Those Bush/Obama Tax Cuts Cost Us $11.6 Million An Hour

A report from the National Priorities Project - slogan: Bringing the Federal Budget Home - finds that tax cuts to the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans continue to cost the U.S. Treasury - ie: us - $11.6 million every hour of every day. They've installed a rolling counter to see that the total is...well, it's gone up a few hundred thousand since you started reading this.

                    www.commondreams.org

 

Technorati Tags: Bush Tax Cuts,Deficits,Tax Payers,Economy,Current Events,An American Gothic,#OWS,Occupy Wall Street

Is This A System Worth Preserving?

Daily Kos

  By swellsman   on Sat Oct 15, 2011

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

                            --W. Somerset Maugham

One thing that the Occupy Movement has done magnificently is draw attention to the fact that the vast, vast majority of Americans have been ill-served by the top-oriented, trickle-down economic and political policies to which our country has pledged its allegiance for the past 30 years.  And no group within OWS has done that more eloquently, more movingly, than We Are the 99%.

If you click on that link and go to their tumblr you’ll read testimonial after testimonial from average people who have been left scrambling to fend for themselves as a result of these policies.  Testimonials from people who discovered when the final debt bubble burst that, in 21st century America, working hard and playing by the rules is no longer enough to ensure one’s survival.  Forget about the aphorism that says “a society’s greatness is measured by how it treats the least of its members,” these people are coming to grips with the fact that America’s top-oriented, trickle-down approach often doesn’t set a place at the table for even average Americans.

I suppose that the apologists for the current system recognize how compelling these stories are because one of them, Erick son of Erick, recently started a competing tumblr: We Are the 53%.  Its name derives from the fact that, in America, only 53 percent of the population earns even the minimum amount necessary to subject them to federal income taxes.  So these people are what passes for the lucky ones in today’s America.

The site itself contains testimonials from people describing how hard they’ve personally had to work, sometimes describing how poor they still are, and yet how little sympathy they have for anybody with the temerity to point out that 21st century America is a grossly unfair place in which to live.

Many of these testimonials are truly maddening – not in a These people make me so angry I can’t see straight kind of a way, but in an I can’t understand why you are fighting to preserve a system that clearly doesn’t care about you kind of way.

Some things should just be obvious.  Both We Are the 53% and We are the 99% define themselves in reference to the American population as a whole – so, pretty clearly, nearly everybody who is a member of the 53% is also and at the same time a member of the 99%.  The math alone means there’s almost perfect overlap between the two groups.

But, of course, this isn’t about math.  It’s about competing views of one’s place in society, of one’s obligation to society, and of society’s obligation to its members.

If one photo/testimonial has become the face of the We Are the 53% tumblr, it must be this one:

For anyone having a hard time reading this rather truculent looking young man’s statement, he describes himself as a former Marine who now works two jobs, doesn’t have health insurance, had to work 60 – 70 hours a week for 8 years to pay for college, and hasn’t had four consecutive days off in four years.  Sounds pretty horrible.  Yet he closes with this sentiment:  “But I don’t blame Wall Street.  Suck it up you whiners.  I am the 53%.  God Bless the USA!”

(You just know this guy has blared Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA all his life and not once has he ever actually listened to the lyrics.)

Staring at that photo just produces such cognitive dissonance in me that I almost don’t know where to begin.  But to start with, let me say that I do understand this man’s pride in what he has accomplished and had to overcome to get to where he is today.  Working the equivalent of 2 full-time jobs, for 8 years, to put oneself through college is beyond admirable and kudos to him for managing that.

But what I don’t understand is why it seems never to have occurred to him that he shouldn’t have had to do that.  Is getting a college degree in the United States really supposed to be so difficult?  Is an America in which someone has to work as hard as this young man did for 8 years in order to get that degree – which is rapidly becoming a requirement for employment in all but the more menial jobs – the type of society to which we should aspire?

And consider the circumstances in which this young man actually finds himself now; what has all that hard work and his service to his country as a Marine earned him?  Today he still has to work two jobs, is unable to take any vacation time, and doesn’t have health insurance.  After all that work and service he is absolutely slaving away and still is only one serious illness, one physical accident, one stroke of bad luck from complete and utter bankruptcy.

Is this, in fact, the way American society is supposed to work in the 21st century?  For all this young man already has contributed to our economy and to our country . . . is his reward supposed to be nothing more than a life spent working like a dog and hoping against hope that his luck holds out?  Or the luck of his wife, or of his children?

Is this a system worth preserving?

* * *

Some years ago I met and had a fairly long conversation with another young Marine, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.  (I'm from a Marine Corps family, and my hometown is a Marine Corps town.)  At the time, America’s bloody Iraq misadventure already had been recognized for the gross debacle it was, but Bush II was still in office and nobody seemed to have a plan for extricating the United States from that catastrophe in a way that wouldn’t make it obvious just how badly the Dauphin had screwed up to begin with.

As I’ve mentioned before, policy makers generally find it easier to keep pursuing disastrous policies than to admit that they made a mistake in the first place.  This is the sunk cost phenomenon in which “policy makers tend to favor uncertain success over certain loss.  As long as the project is neither completed nor stopped, the dilemma will keep presenting itself.”

And this often results in some serious heartbreak.  That young Marine I met and spoke with years ago knew that Iraq was a failed experiment and he knew that it was almost certain he would be sent back there within less than a year for another tour of duty, but he didn’t know – he couldn’t know – if he’d ever make it back home that next time.

Of course, it’s not just policy makers who are subject to the sunk cost dilemma – everybody has to deal with it from time to time, and I’m staring at the face of the man in the picture above and I wonder if that is what he is doing.

Maybe the reason he seems so determined to preserve a system that clearly just does not care whether he lives or dies is because he’s spent years really believing all the people who told him the game is fair, and now if he acknowledges the game is actually rigged then he’ll also have to acknowledge that he’s been played for a fool.  Maybe, having worked and sweated as hard and as honorably as he has, he can’t bear to think that all of that work may have been for nothing, a down payment on a promise that almost certainly will never be kept.

Or maybe, like so many other people, he just can’t distinguish between needless sacrifice and noble sacrifice.  Maybe he confuses suffering with value.

Do you remember this exchange, from back when Bush the Lesser was traveling the country and trying to gin up support for his plan to abolish social security?

  Ms. Mornin:      Okay, I’m a divorced, single [57 year-old] mother with three grown, adult children.  I have one child, Robbie, who is
mentally challenged, and I have two daughters.

Pres. Bush:      Fantastic.  First of all, you’ve got the hardest job in America,being a single

mom . . . .

Ms. Mornin:      I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

Pres. Bush:      You work three jobs?

Ms. Mornin:      Three jobs, yes.

Pres. Bush:      Uniquely American, isn’t it?  I mean, that is fantastic that   you’re doing that.  (Applause.)  Get any sleep?  (Laughter.)

Ms. Mornin:      Not much.  Not much.

It is hard to conceive of someone more clearly missing the point here than did President Junior.  Ms. Mornin’s toiling away at three jobs to support herself and her handicapped son is admirable to be sure . . . but it’s not fantastic.  It’s not ‘fantastic’ that in 21st century America this woman has to work as hard as she does and go without sufficient sleep because that is the only way she can earn enough money to support herself and her handicapped son.

But that Ms. Mornin is in fact living a terrible life completely escaped Bush’s notice.  So far as he was concerned – this son of a president, this Ivy League legacy, this man whose fortune and career was handed to him every step of the way by people desperate to curry favor with his daddy – this woman’s life was no more relatable or real to him than a Lifetime Channel Made-For-TV Inspirational Movie . . . but it was just as entertaining.

So maybe that is what the young man in the picture is thinking.  Maybe he fancies that the degree to which his life has worth is measured by the degree to which he has to suffer.  Maybe his martyrdom on a broken system is what proves to him that his life is meaningful.  Maybe believing that the system ultimately is fair is what permits him to view his time spent on this planet as a period of noble sacrifice, and not one of pointless waste.

In the end I can’t know, will never know.  But I’d be willing to bet that, if this young man’s sacrifices never pay off, if he continues to get shafted year after year after year by a system that at best dismisses him and at worst despises him because he is not already one of the blessed few . . . his attitude will eventually change.  A lifetime of toil, disappointment and suffering ultimately will render him – as it renders almost everybody – petty and vindictive, just as Maugham suggests.

And that won’t be good for him, and it won’t be good for anybody else.

Originally posted at Casa Cognito.

Originally posted to swellsman on Sat Oct 15, 2011

Also republished by Occupy Wall Street and Community Spotlight.

 

Technorati Tags: Occupy Wall Street,#OWS,Class Warfare,We Are The 53%,We Are The 99%,Wages,ODK Veteran,Current Events,An American Gothic