(6 of 8)
Scholars frequently belittle CNN for its unscholarly haste and supposed shallowness. In place of slowly mulled research from experts steeped in their field, CNN delivers raw news. It features live events, bulletins and studios full of talking heads, often with scant analysis. CNN came into being just as the Big Three American networks were moving away from their tradition of in- house experts, and the new network set the pace. CNN anchors are apt to be more trained in the mechanics of television than in the nuances of the many subjects they discuss. The reporting ranks number mostly workaday generalists.
CNN nonetheless does a good job on business, technology, entertainment and sports and capably covers the White House and U.S. politics. It can show great sensitivity in dealing with racial and multicultural conflict and is attuned to the concerns of women and gays. But its intellectual thinness is evident in the way it covers foreign affairs -- with the same tired emphasis on revolutions, wars, famines and disasters found in the traditional half-hour nightly network news shows, despite having the airtime to give a more rounded picture. An emphasis on events rather than analysis may, however, be a factor in CNN's broad appeal, argues G. Cleveland Wilhoit, professor of journalism at Indiana University and associate director of the university-wide Institute for Advanced Study. Says he: "Ideological critics of the media, left and right, agree on one thing -- that the press is too arrogant, too ready to tell people what to think. By its very structure, CNN is populist. It provides the raw materials of the story and lets the viewers form their own opinions."
The idea that CNN ought to be more analytic and instructive is not universally held among government and business leaders either. Many like the network just as it is. Sir Bernard Ingham used to be the combative press secretary to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, herself so big a fan of CNN that the network has made special arrangements for her to get it at ( her office. Says Ingham: "I don't think we want analysis. What we want is reporting of the facts. People can form their own judgments. There are too damn many journalists analyzing the news."
A great deal of the criticism of CNN from outside the U.S. seems to be rooted in general resentment of U.S. power and influence. The network is often labeled as the latest example of U.S. cultural imperialism. Longtime French TV news correspondent Christine Ockrent calls CNN "a U.S. channel with a global vocation, but which sees the world through an American prism." She is dismissive of its most widely discussed experiment, the weekly World Report, which airs unedited stories taken from TV channels around the world. Says Ockrent: "Asking Serbian television for its reading of the situation is not providing world news but merely the Serbian version. When CNN's footage is not homemade in the U.S., it is homemade in some other country. That's not being international."