CNN back on its game in Iran
Sun, Jun 21, 2009
I wrote on Monday how upset I was with MSM coverage of Iran. There’s a reason why I was so upset with CNN, in particular. With the exception of the BBC, no news organization on earth has the institutional capacity of CNN. Since most Americans can’t see the BBC live, Americans rely almost exclusively on CNN to bring them in depth, analytical, and minute to minute coverage of major events that change our world. If CNN isn’t doing it, no one will.
After taking it on the chin from the blogosphere for several days, it’s time to applaud CNN. Last weekend, CNN was basically dead air on Iran. This weekend the full power of CNN is on display, in what amounts to a team effort to duplicate what only Andrew Sullivan and Nico Pitney have done from their laptops up to now. Nothing was stopping CNN from doing exactly what Andrew and Nico did, but they were caught flat-footed. Today, they are in a groove.
First, they are now repeatedly holding up to the camera the fax from the Iranian government banning CNN from working in the country without editorial permission from the government for what they report. That fax is not only news itself, it is also keeping CNN from doing what its American viewers expect of CNN, and CNN simply has to explain this.
Then CNN goes into “eat this” mode, airing what Andrew and Nico have been breaking since this began. Like Andrew and Nico, CNN constantly reminds viewers that accounts from Twitter and Youtube are not confirmed by CNN, which allows CNN to report it raw, without losing their credibility if it turns out to be untrue.
But unlike Andrew and Nico, CNN has what appears to be half a dozen people at its “Iran desk”, translating Farsi, working to confirm, contacting people in Iran – i.e., doing what reporters are supposed to do. Added to this is the normal line up of top tier A-list experts and analysts, except now they are free to comment on what we have all been seeing online, because CNN is reporting it, too. Imagine what CNN has going on behind the scenes if they put this much of their process on the air.
CNN has turned a corner before our eyes. They’ve adapted to the new media environment, perhaps slowly, but deliberately and institutionally. With this new approach, it is quite likely that CNN will break the biggest developments going forward, for the simple fact that CNN is a massive organization with huge resources at its disposal to report truth, and is now oriented forward, rather than backward.
Great job, all concerned.
Tags: andrew sullivan, cnn, iran, nico pitney
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:53 am
It’s a bit exciting to watch how traditional media and new media are working together here – Twitter’s #CNNFail seems to have convinced them to put all the resources at their disposal to good use and now we’re getting much better reporting from CNN than before. I noticed the increased coverage too and have been very glad to see it.
I’m also glad to see that the whole world is now interested in the election and the events afterwards, because for a while it didn’t look like anyone outside of the country was the least bit interesting in spite of how dynamic and weird it was this year (questioning your opponent’s wife’s Ph.D – seriously WTF kind of debate tactic was that!).
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:55 am
I didn’t follow CNN last weekend, but this weekend I was watching (with horror) the coverage of the Iranian Demonstrations and by far the best coverage was on CNN. They really seem to know the area and players. This is MSM at its best- deploying their resources on location and utilizing multi-leveled contacts developed on the ground over time- that bloggers could never hope to match. This is why it will be such a shame when traditional media dies.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:43 am
CNN have redeemed themselves, doing a good job with Iran coverage since everyone jumped on them for taking the first weekend of protests off. But this whole week has shown just how bad network news is, how much they choose not to show, and what ranks as priorities in place of events in Iran. Network TV has not got a clue on how to deliver real information to the American people. They are more interested in gimmick stories about classic cars and picnics than one of the worlds great countries fighting for its freedom. And of course 1/3 of their broadcast is devoted to commercials pushing drugs so what can you expect from such sellout “journalists”. Sad.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:36 am
What short memories some of us have. One weekend or two days of coverage does NOT make up for CNN carrying and continuing to “carry the water” for the Bush administration and the GOP. CNN went from cutting edge media to status quo pretty darned quick following their great coverage during the first Gulf War.
I did watch yesterday and it’s on right now, but the second I see that idiot Bill Bennett’s face as some kind of expert ON ANYTHING, it’s off. There’s CSPAN, MSNBC or best of all – The Internetz, specifically Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera has an English site with streaming video. It’s a tremendous network.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
While it is true that the Iran coverage from CNN has gone to a whole new level compared to their performance last week, it is also true that most of their “news” coverage is either of the “soft, local” type – protest rallies in some US cities, getting the viewpoints from the US-Iranian community – or the analysis type where they talk with prominent US-Iranians to highlight and explain what has been going on in Iran for the past few days. For the “hard news” we – and CNN and other MSM as well – are still almost entirely dependent on Twitter and other social media.
I do not want to understate the importance of analysis – that is very important to help us look at the goings on from a different perspective than our own subjective ones – but I do not understand what is keeping the CNN from having their own people on ground and using tweets and youtube to get the news out. Is it the economics (get other people to do your job for free), institutional cowardice (fearing future repercussions from the Iranian government for defying their ban) or just the plain vanilla personal cowardice (I don’t want to put my life in danger, I’ll just use the messages and videos from other people who are putting their lives in danger) that is stopping them from getting to us reports from the ground?
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:23 am
Bishop – I’ll answer the second part of your comment. The BBC folks were told to get out over the weekend and that may be a factor for others in MSM. And – CNN may NOT have a bureau in Tehran; I don’t know.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
I think Fareed Zakaria GPS did a great analysis of the events over the last week on Sunday’s boradcast. He and his show continue to impress me and I hope to see more from him on CNN. He really knows how to mitigate the discussion and seems to have on the most informed guests rather then the standard go to “experts”.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
@wordsmith: Yes I can see that that is something that CNN and the others can hold up as their excuse for not reporting from the ground BUT, on the other hand, BBC was prohibited from reporting right at the beginning of this unrest and they still managed to do some clandestine shooting and posting of hard news.
I guess I expected CNN coverage to be of the first Gulf war type, when they were the only news organization that had reporters on ground reporting news by just using telephones! Rick Sanchez of CNN spins it as a compliment that people expected so much of CNN, but for me it is just disappointing that their coverage did not reach the pioneering levels of the early nineties. Cutting to Twitter feeds every five minutes, screaming Breaking News, just just doesn’t do it for me – I can read Twitter on my own.
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Ditto what Mike said.
I watched it twice having TiVo’d it yesterday.