CNN: The Defeat of “Bipartisan” News

The most celebrated news channel in the world is sinking in American shares, but, surprisingly, it’s not because of online competition. Rather, CNN is struggling to compete against rival television stations, such as Fox News and MSNBC, who are much more strictly aligned to their political orientations.

Only the cruelty of fate could have caused the demise of poor Ken Jautz. He is “the one,” the reporter who reported the fall of the Berlin Wall for the Associated Press. Now he’s the one who finds himself dodging the fallout and trying to get what’s left of the latest TV collapse back on its feet. Yes, the great wall that is CNN is beginning to crumble like chalk. This time the former reporter finds himself on the wrong side of history — the side where the wall collapses. The head of CNN news knows that viewership is a disaster. Piers Morgan, the British replacement for “Larry King Live,” has at least broken one record: He garnered the lowest figure in 15 years for that prime time slot.

On May 15, 2012, at nine PM, a measly 39,000 viewers tuned into what is supposed to be the most famous network in the world. Yet, these falling numbers certainly don’t justify lay-offs or cutting funds for the network that was established over 30 years ago by Ted Turner, the billionaire who divides himself between two passions: information and philanthropy. He is already known for saving at least two living beings in danger of extinction: the buffalo and Jane Fonda.

The old Ted we used to know is gone and has now relinquished most of his ownership of Time Warner, a media giant second only to Disney. But not even calling in Superman to the rescue (which, by the way, Time Warner owns the rights to through its subsidiary DC Comics) would be able to save CNN, it seems.

The truth is that the accounts aren’t even that bad. With $600 million in profit, CNN isn’t the last wheel of the Time Warner wagon. But it is a wheel gone mad, as CNN International has become the primary source of profit while at home, the Cable News Network, gloriously known by its acronym, is suffering.

Each day brings its own sorrow. This past April’s entire prime time is an insult to the legacy of this network whose massive viewership between eight and eleven PM was the carnation in their lapel. Now, that carnation has withered to the point of losing 20,000 viewers (less than the last record low of Christmas 2010), sinking the network to its lowest point in 20 years. And that’s not all. If you round up the 10 worst weeks of the last 20 years, four (four!) are accounted to 2012. Isn’t that enough to declare 2012 the annus horribilis of CNN? Isn’t that enough to declare even the reign of good Ken Jautz horribilis?

This raises two questions that cannot be ignored: Why does CNN’s American audience matter so much if the international one holds up the network? And why has CNN’s audience been nose-diving for years?

The first answer is simple: Domestic performance gives the network prestige and power (and thus, attention and investment), which is then translated to international prestige. The second is even simpler: In an America with everyone armed against each other, “quality journalism,” which was once the foundation of CNN’s neutrality between the right and left, no longer holds up.

CNN’s first problem is Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, which produces strictly conservative journalism where the facts are blatantly expressed through opinions. And now there’s GE’s (General Electric’s) MSNBC, which is strictly liberal — where opinions are expressed with facts.

Fox, established in 1996, quickly became the number one American all-news network, supporting enlightened campaigns like the one against the election of Barack Obama, the affirmation of the tea party and, today, the campaign against the re-election of Barack Obama. MSNBC, doing the exact opposite in 2010, became the second most popular U.S. network, pushing CNN into the inglorious third place, with only 357,000 spectators.

2010 was the turning point. CNN was so desperate that they released Jon Klein, the man who raised the bar, a network legend who 30 years ago innovated programs like “Nightline,” the news journal that was subsequently imitated all over the world. Who took his place?

Ken Jautz: the former reporter who had already transitioned into the role of manager. While with HLN (Headline News), CNN’s sister station, he discovered and launched the super conservative Glenn Beck, who eventually moved onto rival Fox News, which is famous for having accused Obama of racism. It was one thing to take certain elephantine liberties on HLN but it’s another to make the same large, clumsy decisions in the jewelry shop that is CNN. Jautz maintains that “quality journalism” should be the mantra of CNN.

But, for example, even Piers Morgan, who replaced Larry “Suspenders” King, was hired in the same misguided hope that is reminiscent of how audiences across the nation learned to serve under the banner of Super Rupert [Murdoch]. Further, the “quality journalism” of Anderson Cooper (perhaps the best TV correspondent in the world, someone who has been appearing on TV since he was three years old, interviewing with his artist and billionaire mother Gloria Vanderbilt) faces the challenge of having his own prime time program. It doesn’t hold up with the same strength as it does in his reports from Haiti or the Arab Spring.

In the end, this is the curse of CNN. Brian Stelter, the media expert of The New York Times, sums it up with an industry joke:

When war breaks out, when there’s a crisis, when there’s a shooting, everyone runs to tune in, like when Peter Arnett was the only one in the world to transmit his comb-over via satellite from Baghdad: everyone runs, the same way they hurry to a hospital for an emergency or an accident. But as soon as the emergency is over, who wants to linger, day after day, prime time after prime time, in the ER called CNN?

This is why poor Jautz has nothing left but to hope for wars and floods, shootings and earthquakes. To bring in profit, he can only hope for the Berlin Wall to fall again, before his own wall comes down once and for all.