Both BBC & CNN are very repetitious but that is what they are supposed to be ie you can turn on at any time & get the key points of the news within 15 to 30 minutes. If you want to sit & watch for hours then you are watching the wrong channel & should probably consider getting a life.
I watch (haf watch might be more accurate)CNN for 30 minutes each morning while I have my wake up coffee in bed. Seems OK to me. Broadcast out of Hong Kong with a mixture of Asian & international news . I watch very occasionally at weekend eg International Correspondent is usually quite good.
In China I used to watch BBC in a similar way. I think BBC is slightly more repertitive than CNN but only just. Given the choice I would probably watch BBC …but I dont have the choice as only CNN is available on my cable.
The only local TV news I have watched is “Inside Taiwan” which is indeed a bizarre creation. I feel mildly embarrassed admitting that I have watched it (though only 3 times…honest) as this probably puts me firmly in the …needs to get a life segment I referred to earlier…
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]CNN is also very selective as to what it covers and how. I have been following the Iraq debacle very closely every day and it is flagrant the way that CNN sanitizes its coverage. I also find it pathetic that it is just now starting to “discover” the deceptive practices of the Bush administration when the evidence was out there six months ago. It is a testament to their creative skills to see how they are slowly taking credit for coming to a story tragically late.
CNN is a shill for the US; FOX is the Bush administration’s private mouthpiece. BBC is the best if you want the news without the clowns, bells, whistles, and blatant bias.[/quote]
Oh, barf. And what of the BBC reporter who “sexed up” his article, resulting in the suicide of that poor unfortunate weapons inspector who got caught in the middle?
The BBC has its own bias: left-wing, anti-war. They’re willing to screw over anyone and anything in their way to try to torpedo Bush and Blair. CNN is similar; if you think CNN is “pro-American”, your view of what America should be must be something like the Soviet Union under Stalin. Teddy Turner ain’t no Bush supporter, herr dude.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]
Heard this on CNN, promoting one of their shows:
“When something happens, anywhere in the world, it’s international news to those who live there”.
Hmmm, wouldn’t it be local news to those who live there, and international news (or at least world news) to the rest of us.
Brian[/quote]
I think it’s pretty obvious that what is meant is, “when something happens . . . the locals believe that it is worthy of being international news.” So it’s stupid; what did you expect, it’s advertising.
I believe that it was the government dossier that was sexed up, not the news report.
Every news organization has its leanings, but FOX and CNN are pretty unabashed about it. I wonder what sort of things are going on in university classes on media and its management of perceptions.
I remember one of the big bosses defending CNN’s lack of coverage of world demonstrations against the start of war on Iraq by saying that the story didn’t seem to have a “center.” It was total duck and cover by management.
I wonder if unbiassed news reporting is possible, probably not.
To be unbiassed would require first to have all the facts in front of you
& then report them in an even handed manner. Problem is , all the facts
are never available , access may be restricted etc etc. Then the reporting organisation has to use judgement . As soon as judgement is used , biass will inevitably be present.
eg : 0.001 % of the population demonstrate against the war in Iraq. One persons judgement may argue that this is evidence of public opposition to the war. Another might argue that this means that 99.999% of the population are either supportive or couldnt care less.
I suppose it comes down to what level of biass is acceptable & then who makes this call. Makes me also wonder what is more insidious : a news organisation that appears objective & hence gains the trust of its audience while subtly applying biass or one that is overtly biassed & people are aware of this & take everyting it reports with a pinch of salt.
The subtle biass is probably better because many people seem naive enough to accept even overt biass without question.
Forgive me for my stereotyping here, but Americans for the most part are not the most curious people when it comes to the outside world, unless it directly involves them. This is true even among the professional classes. CNN reflects this.
I would love to see the quality equal that of the BBC. But, you have to remember the audiences are completely different. I am sure intellectual news executives for the big three and CNN would like to raise the editorial content. But if it became like the BBC, the masses would change channels and vote with their clickers. Tell me this: Do you think “Joe Sixpack” reads the New Yorker, Vanity Fair for “Hitchens” and the BBC? Of course not. I hate Murdoch. But he knows this. CNN has already lost a large market share to FOX. In the future, I see standards slipping even further at CNN.
MaPoDoFu said: The BBC has its own bias: left-wing, anti-war. They’re willing to screw over anyone and anything in their way to try to torpedo Bush and Blair. CNN is similar; if you think CNN is “pro-American”, your view of what America should be must be something like the Soviet Union under Stalin. Teddy Turner ain’t no Bush supporter, herr dude.
I think it is inaccurate to compare Turner to Stalin or Herr (reference to Hitler I surmise) First of all, during most of the Cold War (up to early 80s) Turner was a good ole’ Southern boy and was even written upon favourably in conservative magazines such as National Review. Nominally a Democrat at that time, he become more politically involved when his fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter became president. Over time, this influence helped him move toward liberal stances on many issues. Marrying Jane Fonda (now divorced) moved his politics leftward as well. I would take the Mouth of the South with his eccentricities over Murdoch, Black, etc. any day. He has donated over 1 billion to the UN and his opinions on everthing from September 11 to environmental destruction are entertaining and worth noting.
but…sometimes, the buried stuff is the best stuff. the little snippet just thrown in there for no apparent reason is often times the seed thatgrows into headline news. what one editor buries another pumps up. so it goes…
there isn’t any practical reason we can expect any single media outlet to be all things to all people. CNN, in this regard, is no different than a major metropolitan daily newspaper. one is often times necessitated to take in the rival so as to calibrate against spin.
here in taiwan (at least in my little corner) the international community is under the television news monopoly of CNN. a good question perhaps would be why? when i vacate back to the PI, a broader spectrum of choices is on display for the cable subscriber. CNN, BBC and FOX are all there. these networks live off the competition. having only one eliminates nuance, balance and in the end…the truth.
so, what of taiwan’s cable industry? what is it but regionalized fiefdoms thriving due to gov’t protection from competition? their commitment to quality can be discerened by their advertising policies of inserting additional commercials while cutting the premier programming and the incessant use of flying banners advertising cable modum at all times. the bosses provide minimal services for international rates and pocket the difference. good for them, bad for us. why is it cable TV in the philippines (even in basco!) offers a fuller pallete of choices than in a developed country such as taiwan for equal (more or less) monthly subscription rates?
CNN, in the end, is only as good as the cable provider that carries it. having only one information source is not good.
I think it is inaccurate to compare Turner to Stalin or Herr (reference to Hitler I surmise)[/quote]
Chewy, you’re extremely far off.
First, the “herr” referred to Wolf, who AFAIK is German. No Hitler reference was present in my post in any way, shape, or form.
Second, there was no comparison of Ted Turner to Stalin, nor to anyone else for that matter. He’s just a leftist dip who happened to control the most influential cable news outlet in the U.S. for quite a while (which is probably why CNN has a leftist bias in its coverage – it sure isn’t “pro-American” or even “pro-Bush”).
I suppose it is nice that you are entertained by Ted Turner. Personally, I think he should be dipped in Gravy Train™ and thrown to a pack of crazed poodles.
Personally, I think he should be dipped in Gravy Train™ and thrown to a pack of crazed poodles.
Why? Because he dislikes a lot of the redneck backwoodspeople in his state? Because he is an internationalist? Because of his philanthropy? Whether its helping re-population bison in Montana or helping out with the UN, he is giving back to society unlike Murdoch.
I was highly entertained at his comments on Ash Wednesday a few years back. Christians at CNN wore the ashes on their forehead and Ted looked at them and said “Shouldn’t you Jesus freaks be working at Fox.”
I also like his comments during the elections last November. He was dismayed that Georgians could vote out a Vietnam veteren with no legs (Sen. Max Cleland D) for a right-wing idiot (Saxby Chambliss R).
Personally, I don’t know why people would vote out such a remarkable man. I guess eating too much cornbread and mayonnaise sandwiches in the rural areas makes some people angry toward the system.
I am certainly not saying that the BBC reporter did not make a mistake because he obviously did. One cannot make the kind of claim that he did without being certain that there is written evidence to back it up.
So, I suppose what I am responding to is slightly off-topic, as I am addressing the perception that the Campbell did not have a fairly strong hand in crafting the report.
If you still believe that #10 did not “sex up” the Iraq WMD report, then I would definitely recommend reading through the Hutton Inquiry archives. The Guardian website has a lot of good information, too.
What can be very clearly deduced after a reasonably careful reading of the material is that the only reason the revisions to the report were not entirely attributable to Campbell was that great care was taken to set a protocol in place regarding what information and instruction from Cambpell’s office would and would not be issued in writing and to follow it.
Of course, this protocol is not specifically stated, but the records seem to show that Campbell has a very masterful sense of how to navigate some very difficult and tricky matters of procedure.
Even so, it was clearly proved that Campbell did make substantial changes to the “presentation” of the report. However, given the nature of such an intelligence report, there is very little distrinction between changing its content and its presentation. I cannot recall the rest of the details about which phrases and words were revised by Campbell’s office,
but the fact that there were directives from Campbell’s office exhorting the Joint Intelligence Command for more, stronger, and more incriminating evidence shows, indisputably and by itself, that his office did in fact take a hand in shaping the report.
And my apologies to all if I am a little too far off-topic…