Reply #165: done, (and windy too!)

[NuttyFluffers]

body of message:

I've been watching CNN, along with my family and friends, for several years now. Normally we'd just breeze on through with Headline News. Only recently had we found anything with staying power and that was Lou Dobbs, asking difficult questions that Americans really want to talk about.

The level of journalistic quality has been degrading so rapidly these several years, and most notably completely complicit with everything this current presidential administration does. And that's if we are lucky to find out any information about what this administration does.

We've now switched mostly to foreign news because we actually get what we want - news. The rest of the world realizes that bias will slip into any reporting, but try to minimize it with a standard format basic to just about all writing: concrete detail followed by commentary. They report world news, they report governmental news, science news, and only at the very end do we get fluff. Here, we get fluff first, especially if it is going to conflict with political interests or deal with hard complex issues. Guess what, most people don't want their news to be Entertainment Tonight, they want to be informed.

I think you are failing your job right now and I am sorely embarrased that I must rely on foreign news to stay abreast of current events. This is an intolerable situation. And this attempt to swing into the latest fad to capture audiences is just sad. Don't emulate Fox's saturation of bias followed by schizophrenic denial of it. Don't emulate ET chasing after the latest bit of gossip and holding us in a death grip of several days of the same boring details. Don't emulate the rampant punditry who sit there and pontificate all day long without any accountability to facts or real analysis. Just do good journalism.

It's not that hard, the rest of the world seems to be able to do it with less money and prestige. Maybe Ted Turner needs to come back because you are becoming as incompetant as the pretend news you want to emulate. There is no success, and no future in that.

An honest warning: change to the basics of journalistic integrity or be forgotten like the rest.