Draft of letter to CNN -- comments appreciated

[Sparkly]

(Not that they'll heed it, but I'd welcome feedback. I may revise for a LTTE and will send it to Aaron Brown, who used to write me back alot.)

CNN:

My husband and I work from home, follow politics closely, and keep our televisions on, tuned to news, through most of the day and night. Never have I been more infuriated, or more baffled, by your “news” coverage. It’s become increasingly obvious that you seek to boost your ratings by emphasizing the sensational and the trivial, yet I can understand putting revenues above responsibility as a rationale. But not even profit motive can entirely explain your astounding efforts at propping up George W. Bush.

During the 2000 presidential campaigns, I thought you were simply bending over backwards in an effort not to appear “liberally biased,” but would correct yourselves and find balance eventually.

After the USSC’s decision about Florida in 2000, I thought you were just trying to prevent riots by spinning facts to pacify a public who’d just had democracy ripped out from under them.

After 9/11, I thought you were just trying to unify a country longing to be united under strong leadership.

But at this point, I can’t imagine what you’re thinking.

Your reporting on the Democratic primary campaigns was stunningly insulting, especially regarding your former commentator, General Wesley Clark. You’ve re-run “A Flyboy’s Story” at least four times, for no apparent reason. And you continue to employ Bob Novak, who’s seriously betrayed national security on a level traitorous if not treasonous.

From Judy Woodruff to Paula Zahn, Tucker Carlson to Cate O’Berne, Wolf Blitzer to Candy Crowley, I’ve come to distrust most of your anchors, reporters, and talkers. They seem utterly unable even to report common-knowledge facts as given by the AP and Reuters. (Do you read your feedback?) Only Lou Dobbs and Aaron Brown have remained on the routine schedule of our TV, but at this point all loyalty has faded.

The last straw was your reporting on the DNC convention last week, which was absolutely amazing in its malice. By Monday, I decided I couldn’t stand CNN for ongoing coverage, but only as a periodic check-in (thanks, C-Span). By Thursday, CNN check-ins became virtually indistinguishable from Fox check-ins, and MSNBC “After Hours” was the only palatable television discussion of the convention. (It says a lot when CNN makes Joe Scarborough seem rational.)

You paved the way with Sunday night’s “Born to Run.” Perhaps I should have run when I heard Candy Crowley’s byline, but Aaron Brown introduced it asking, “What does John Kerry stand for? What does he really believe? And most importantly, what sort of president would he make?”

Trusting Aaron, I watched. I watched the repetition of every now-familiar, long-discounted rightwing smear Rove ever faxed, with people like John O’Neill and Bob Dole as quotable sources. (If you want to see a factual biographical documentary, watch MSNBC’s “John Kerry: Bringing the War Home.”)

Then the DNC Convention began, with “trusted” commentary from people like Brent Bozell, Zell Miller, and Ralph Reed! Aaron Brown interviewing Laura Ingraham about the Democrats’ convention was sadly beyond belief.

Given your line-up of commentators on my party’s convention, I’d like to offer some suggestions for similarly fair, trusted coverage of the August RNC convention in New York, following the model you established for the DNC convention. The list below suggests people to be interviewed for your biographical documentary of Bush, who can provide character analyses and personal opinions of him, just as John O’Neill, Bob Dole, and others expressed their personal opinions of John Kerry in “Born to Run.” Others should be contacted to provide their opinions on every major RNC speech and event, as well as overall criticism of the convention (all unrebutted, of course), just as Bozell, Miller, Reed, and Ingraham did.

In no particular order:

Michael Moore
Al Franken
Jeanneane Garafolo
Joe Conason
Al Sharpton
Bill Maher
Mario Cuomo
Ann Richards
Whoopi Goldberg
Paul Krugman
Molly Ivins
Cynthia McKinney
David Brock
Maxine Waters
Nancy Pelosi

Only by having these people as unrebutted commentators for the RNC convention can you earn back any part of the slogan “trusted news source.”

Sincerely,