The demise of CNN News.

CNN recently announced that it might be having a reality show on their network.
You know about reality shows. They are when you get actors who are great at improv, to provide conflict over every inane idea for an hour. Whether it is entertainment is debatable. Whether it is fit for CNN is another thing.  Keeping Up With the Kardashians being a perfect example but these no-brainer reality shows now include all those Picker and Auction sites, Hog Catchers in the backwoods, and even the Food Networks are now fighting over how to boil water! Julia Childs please don't cry. They also include The Bachelor, The Biggest Loser and Jersey Shore! And now we even have Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Don't laugh, it is all part of the dumbing down of the American public. (and that's a whole nuther conspiracy theory)
Is this sad or what?

Didn't we all rush to our TVs and tune in CNN when important events had breaking news? We watched live, the demise of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall. Knocking down Saddam's statue. The miner rescues in Chile. And a hundred other happening events that were full of drama and excitement and truthful images. And a reality so full of excitement no script could ever match it!

Not anymore. I recently saw Wolf Blitzer making an argument for his point of view about Libya last week, while frustratingly interrupting the input of his guest, who finally irritatedly announced that Wolfe could argue the point all he wanted to, but his opinion didn't alter the facts of what was actually happening on the ground.
Alas, the days of Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw reporting objectively from the heart of the battle are gone. Who can forget that eerie green footage of combat? And of course we don't know what is happening 'on the ground' anywhere now because we no longer have reports from the action. Or any battlefield or city of turmoil. The whole event is now stage managed. Film clips, sound bites and photo ops.

A friend on the weekend suggested it was Piers Morgan who started the slide of CNN into news gathering oblivion. I think not. But his background as a tabloid editor did not enhance the CNN aura for hard news.
I believe it is the US Government who forced the demise of real reporting when the Pentagon came up with the idea of 'embedded' reporters.

Embedded reporters are those who travel with a war unit into armed conflicts. They are controlled totally on what they can show on camera, where they are allowed to go, and what they can say in that contrived report that flashes to their TV Station for the 6 oclock news. Of course the Army tells them they need to be 'protected' for their own safety. Sort of in the way YOU are being protected by those drones flying overhead and watching everything you do .... for your own safety. Sure.


The 1991 Gulf War was influential in the implementation of controlling reporters. And Reuters News and other legitimate news agencies had many free ranging reporters in Iraq. At my last count there have been about 130 independent reporters mysteriously killed by 'friendly fire.' Not hard to do when a firefight is happening and paid mercenaries are shooting at anything you tell them to. 
Sort of like Vietnam and 'fragging' your own lieutenant.
In those days the news was 'adjusted' through every step up from the combat private who thought he might have killed one Viet Cong to the General who sent a dispatch to President Johnson announcing the death of 500 enemy and one wounded Marine! All the same story.

During the Iraq war in 2003, there were almost 800 embedded journalists! These reporters actually sign contracts with the military on what they will divulge. I did see a woman reporter a while ago. Broadcasting from a battlefield. There was a stone wall she was behind, and she sort of winced at any loud noises, as if being under attack. They even had two Afghans behind her, peering into the distance from behind that wall. Trouble was they were chatting and laughing and playing with their Kalashnikovs while she did some pretty good acting. She was an embedded reporter.

No way they want free style reporters wandering around in the theater of war digging out news. Or the truth of what is actually happening. It is all theater now. That's why you no longer see Michael Ware on CNN, and not much of Nic Robertson. Some reporters even had their credentials and ability to travel freely curtailed because they showed a Humvee riddled with bullet-holes! No way they want the American public to know that the enemy can target and hit our guys too!

So with real news being totally manipulated and spoon fed to the masses. There is no need to see what really happened. It's good enough to know that the good guys are winning.

What is CNN to do? So why not have reality shows on CNN? After all it is about making money isn't it? It's TV, even fake is reality.
Is the demise of CNN the demise of news and truth?

Ted Turner moved on, I guess we have to too.

Details at eleven. We're creating them now.