How to Save CNN from Itself | Hacker News Reader

How to Save CNN from Itself

nytimes.com

15 pointshvo17 comments

CNN used to be my absolute go to for news. However more and more, especially during and after this election their coverage has been biased, opinionated, and worse of all not as accurate and timely as others.

Anchors like Van Jones who push their own agenda, have really rubbed me the wrong way. So much so, that I've switched to the "dark side" Fox News and can say they as a whole provide higher quality news.

Agree 100%, I turn on CNN every Saturday morning at 8-10AM and its the same thing over and over again. A little bit of reporting (usually on the same topic now adays) and then a bunch of experts giving crappy opinions masked as news coverage. I don't care what the president tweeted while taking a shit at 3am last night, what else happened in the world!!!!

> especially during and after this election their coverage has been biased, opinionated

Is there any US mainstream news outlet that hasn't gone this route?

It's gotten to where I ignore MSM as much as possible and just browse headlines on Reddit, especially non default subs, to try to build a balanced picture. As a result, I wasn't surprised Trump won: Some politics subreddits made it clear Rasmussen, IBD, LA Times were polling in favor of Trump, but if you only followed the MSM you probably thought it was some black swan event.

You think Fox News is less biased than CNN? I think that says more about you than CNN. Fox News outright lies and doesn't even cover major issues when they are harmful to their agenda. Fox spent years attacking Hillary for her private emails and yet I haven't seen one peep from them about Trump doing the same thing. All news sources are biased in some way, but Fox doesn't even count as a legit news source--it's a propaganda mill.

When was the last time you actually watched or visited Fox News? I used to feel the exact same way as you. I'm not saying Fox News is the gold standard, but they are way better than CNN.

I watch it almost daily just to see what "the other side" is saying and no it is not better. They ignore major news stories whenever it's inconvenient.

They most certainly are less biased. All media organizations are terrible, but CNN is by far the worst.

Van Jones is not an anchor.

Van Jones is not an anchor and is never presented as such.

He has been hosting a show on Wednesday nights, but it isn't a news format show.

He's an analyst, they have partisans from both side argue throughout the day. They took Jon Stewart's criticism of Crossfire and turned it into a keystone of their programming.

Given the origins of the term, Van Jones is definitely an anchor. He's a regular on the program(s) where the content (news) is ever changing. That's why they call them anchors. He's not a reporter, he's commentary. Most of CNN is commentary.

I've watched both plenty and they do things differently. CNN brings on a panel of "experts" who hold extreme opinions and have them argue for an extended period of time, on the basis that this is "objective". It's almost always useless - providing David Axelrod on the left and Corey Lewandowski on the right doesn't bring both of them to the center, it just leaves a hole where the center should be.

Fox, on the other hand, doesn't do any of this. They simply don't cover stories that don't fit the narrative the network bosses want. So watching it, it seems objective. But unless you're actively comparing it to other networks you have no idea what information they are omitting.

And it's hardly as if Fox has no opinionated coverage - if you object to Van Jones then you ought to object equally to the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, who present shows much like Van Jones now does, and spout absolute gibberish.

Hard news is indeed rare on the "news" channels -- you might be lucky to find more than 30-60 min. of it per day -- but there are some gems. My personal favorite is Special Report with Bret Baier.

I agree with everything the article says. But of course, it's utter fantasy. Especially under a Trump administration, I very much doubt we'll see conditions attached to mergers like this.

the only way to save cnn at this point is to simply let it die. they have become worse than fox.

Yeah, they're begging the question of why they should be saved. Let bad businesses fail.

How do you save the NY Times from itself? Seems like they're in the same hole. Every country has strong public radio and tv, but in the US they are mostly run by private organizations with agendas. So why is this in the NY Times?

With government funding come government strings... :)

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