I’ve had rants about CNN before and thought that another would not be necessary but I just couldn’t hold back posting about this.
First, I have said that I hate CNN, which I do, but unfortunately they put out the big stories first and it appears that no one has the reach CNN does internationally. So I like this page to appear first so I can keep a pulse on the state of affairs in the world. Most of CNN’s stories are biased crap, but I can choose not to click on those.
The first part of my rant has to do with the rise of voyeurism on CNN. If you don’t know what voyeurism is, it means getting sexual gratification from watching others sexual behavior, but I would like to use it in the sense that watching a video of someone titillated, generally excited or causing an intense emotion. Recently CNN has posted videos with these captions:
1. “Watch the boys tears as he describes how his mother died.”
2. “Watch a Las Vegas security guard get beat up.”
How sick is this sh*t? Reading about these stories is bad enough, but has the public become so disturbed that CNN will post videos because people actually enjoy WATCHING the misfortune of others! The point of media nowadays is not to actually supply real news, but to sell newspapers and content that people will buy.
When will this stop? Will it come to videos that depict rape, genocide for the entertainment of others? How about war? Now it’s not only the defense contractors that cash in on war, but also the media like Paula Zahn who run through battlefields in their designer outfits animatedly looking from side to side as though someone is about to shoot her? Now if she got blown up by an IED that would be good entertainment.
Imagine a CNN commercial with images of Paula running here and there with the announcer saying:
“Paula Zahn!!!!! Bringing the tragedy of war directly to your living room for YOUR viewing pleasure.. SHE investigates the story, for………OH…. Damn, Paula just got blown to hell…. Um… well…. (Long pause)…YOU can only see the VIDEO of Paula stepping on an IED HERE, an EXCLUSIVE of CNN Video.
And what is with the marketing of these losers shows on CNN,, How did they come up with the captions such as:
1. “Paula Zahn NOW” or “Lou Dobbs Tonight” – I guess “Paula Zahn when she gets around to it” or “Lou Dobbs” at about 8:30 or mabye 9:14 or so” wasn’t catchy enough.
2. “Anderson Cooper 360 degrees blog” – Aren’t they aware that some people going 360 degrees are going to throw up? How about “Anderson Cooper, dizzy as F**k.”
3. “Situation Room” – And what the hell is the “situation?”,,, Tom Cruise caught punching the clown at the Golden Globes!,,, Your Reaction tonight on CNN. Followed by a CNN poll with one of CNN’s lowball questions “Would you let your child punch their clown at the Grammys’?
4. “American Morning” – In a typical American morning we drink coffee, eat pancakes and scratch our ass… really not that exciting…..
5. “Nancy Grace” – Who the hell is this person? Why do we care??
I forget what the event was that lead to this, but I believe there was some deregulation of the media or something such as this that led to a consolidation of the media sources. When that started to happen, it turned into a business – and a business gets run to make money. I believe that’s the key to the whole mess.
Toss in a rather liberal bias (not that they won’t feed on their own – see Rathergate), and you get the current state of affairs. Rather sad, actually – but I’m not sure any country’s media is much better.