Saving CNN Should be About News, Not Business

(updated below)

Let's look at two different proposals for how CNN can and should fix itself.

A couple weeks ago, Ross Douthat wrote a column for the NYT about how to save CNN, that was fundamentally flawed. The basic problem with his column was that while he identified the core of CNN's problem: its vapid, empty version of non-partisan journalism that basically says nothing at all and is thus just boring, he proposes an inherently problematic solution, essentially merely calling on them to bring more "debate" into the news room.

What might work, instead, is a cable news network devoted to actual debate. For all the red-faced shouting, debate isn’t really what you get on Fox and MSNBC. There’s room, it would seem, for a network where representatives from the right and left can both feel comfortable, and compete on roughly equal terms. Sort of like they did on ... “Crossfire.”

But not the “Crossfire” of 2004. . . .

What cable news needs, instead, is something more like what Stewart himself has been doing on “The Daily Show.” Instead of bringing in the strategists, consultants and professional outrage artists who predominate on other networks, he ushers conservative commentators into his studio for conversations that are lengthy, respectful and often riveting. . . . This is what you find in the riveting television debates of the past: William F. Buckley versus Gore Vidal, Vidal versus Norman Mailer, anything involving Ross Perot. And it’s what you get from the mad, compulsively watchable Glenn Beck, who’s an extremist without being a knee-jerk partisan: You know he’s way out there on the right somewhere, but you don’t know what he’s going to say next.

So Douthat wants a "more riveting" version of the pointless he said-she said style debates that pervade cable news. Great. I mean, he might be right that it would be better TV and thus better for CNN's bottom line, but it really doesn't do much for news. He's essentially asking CNN to become the Sunday talk shows, and we all know how flawed they are. Jay Rosen's "simple fix" will (and is, as the debate's heating up) do more for news in our society that Douthat's suggestion.

Ok, so the other solution focuses less on the bottom line and more on the actual problem - the lack of news. James Poniewozik, Time's media critic, wrote a much much better approach:

The answer for CNN is not to abdicate its authority but to use it more aggressively. Today, with technology making raw news a commodity, the challenge for consumers is sorting out politicized counterclaims on everything from health care to meteorology to security. Viewers want someone to cut through the kicked-up partisan dust. They want to hear, flat out, when someone is full of it. CNN too often gives both sides, then shrugs. A CNN anchor interviewing two party hacks and leaving us to decide who we should believe doesn't cut it.

. . .

The problem is priorities. "No bias. No bull" is a slogan that doesn't make sense: if you're truly dedicated to "no bull," then "no bias" is implicit — though you will end up taking sides. But if your first priority is proving "no bias," you end up pitching bull or pulling your punches, and your audience can tell. (Not to mention it's boring TV.)

. . .

CNN should focus not on both-handedness but on truth. It should let the chips fall where they may, not make sure that the chips, over time, aggregate around the middle. The slogan for my ideal CNN — or any news outlet — would be "The news: whether you like it or not."

If you're a network that claims to be the best in the biz at providing news, then you've taken on a task that requires much more than focus on the bottom line. And frankly, the public hungers for real news, so who knows - providing it might be financially beneficial. But most importantly, regardless of what CNN wants, we need it to get better, not at making a profit, but at informing us all about what we need to know: the news, whether we like it or not.

UPDATE: Atrios mentions something I should be sure also always point out in these posts, like I always do in person:

Everybody in media world agrees. MSNBC is to the left, Fox is to the right, and CNN tries to be down the middle. They all also agree to pretend Morning Joe doesn't exist, even if they're regular guests.

MSNBC is simply not the left-wing version of Fox. The two cannot be equated, period. Douthat actually made the same assumption in his post, and went so far, equating Rachel Maddow to the hosts on Fox News, that he had to run a correction later. The two are not equivalent - MSNBC has a couple anchors with a leftward lean at night who do a good job of documenting their sources and rely on facts in their debate. In the morning, they have on Joe Scarborough, Republican former Congressperson, for three hours. Fox News is, as we all know, Fox News, mostly unhinged from reality. There is no equivalence, no matter how many times "centrist" media types assert that there is.

I only skipped mentioning this before because it was not the main point of either article, but this point needs to be hammered home to everyone, and I will continue to mention it whenever I have to.