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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

Did they ever have credibility?

CNN came to prominence during the first Iraq invasion, because of their live coverage from inside Iraq.

What are the important stories that CNN broke? I can't remember any. They don't seem very big on "investigative" reporting.

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Go look at clips of CNN from the early 80's to see what they used to be like. It was very quaint compared to today.

Well they don't even do that any more. Where is Christiana Amanpour live in Ukraine ducking artillery shells? Where is the live video from a Maverick missile approaching a target?

I suspect the web has changed that a lot. It used to be that CNN was all video, on television. Now people have shifted their news consumption to mainly online text. You can still have web video, of course, but the video/text ratio has changed dramatically in the past 30 years for CNN.

Also, anyone with a smartphone can take video and post it online, so video is not as much at a premium anymore. Professional reporters have been obsoleted somewhat by amateurs.

She interviewed a Taliban leader a week ago maybe, runs her own company I guess. Great YouTube presence.

I used to tell people that CNN was the most neutral of all the cable news channels. The channel a business can have running in their lobby or waiting room without signalling a partisan allegiance (unlike Fox, or MSNBC.)

I still think that, but I usually keep that thought to myself these days because everybody laughs at me cruelly when I say it. I'd say they've lost a lot of credibility.

"I still think that, "

You shouldn't think this anymore. At least since the 2016 campaign CNN turned into the left wing FoxNews.

I thought CNN became a big deal for it's 24 hour news coverage of a kid getting stuck in a well.

That too.

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