CNN’s ratings are in the toilet, and its president resigned last week. The network’s defenders say the problem is that it is an objective, “just the facts” network, in an era when most viewers prefer the partisan approaches they can get from Fox and MSNBC. But no one who actually watches CNN buys that. Scott and I have both written about the horror of being trapped at an airplane gate, and being forced to listen to an infinite loop of CNN’s liberal commentary.

CNN represents the passive-aggressive Left. MSNBC is unrestrained id, but CNN can never fully surrender to its liberal impulses. It tries to maintain a fig leaf of neutrality. But CNN can’t get through the day without betraying what it really thinks, often in underhanded ways. Thus, when CNN did a story on Chick-fil-A today, what did it focus on? The merits of the controversy? The fact that more than one Democratic government official has threatened to violate the company’s constitutional rights, because its CEO is opposed to gay marriage? No. In a dog whistle to its liberal audience, CNN focused on the fact that Todd and Sarah Palin, along with thousands of other Americans, tweeted photos of themselves eating at Chick-fil-A.

CNN introduced its segment with Pink’s “Stupid Girls,” a song which is obviously inappropriate for a cable news bumper, and evidently was intended as a comment on Palin’s support for Chick-fil-A. Here is the beginning of the CNN segment.
Why is the fact that Chick-fil-A’s CEO opposes gay marriage newsworthy? At least half of all Americans oppose gay marriage. So what is the point? There is, indeed, a news story lurking here: public officials in at least two major cities, all of them Democrats, vowed to violate Chick-fil-A’s constitutional rights by denying them permits to operate in their cities because their CEO’s political views are not 100% congruent with those of the Democratic Party–as of today, that is; until two months ago, President Obama was opposed to gay marriage too.

So what does CNN say about the real scandal that is hiding here in plain sight? Nothing. This is it, as you can hear in the video: “Several communities now trying to block Chick-fil-A from coming into their cities.” As though that were completely normal, and constitutional; and as though “communities” were trying to do it, as opposed to two or three liberal Democrats.

This kind of pathetic news coverage explains why CNN has become irrelevant, and now is going down the drain.




http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/why-cnn-is-a-failure.php