This should have been CNN’s time. Whether it’s the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the September 11 attacks or the American invasions of Panama, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, the cable news channel has long been the go-to source for those who want to know what’s really going on in a major current event.
Instead, at a time when the network could use a big ratings win for its substantial coverage of the war in Ukraine, it added to the misery of the past year, where it struggled amid the post-election malaise, leadership departures and a pending mega-merger.
The company fired a few high-caliber shells into its own metaphorical foot, going from a gloomy cover of air raid sirens in Kiev to totally not the same, a restaurant chain startup ad touting the glories of cold beer, chicken wings, and “jeans that fit perfectly”.
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HBO’s John Oliver grilled his corporate cousin on his Sunday night show, noting, “CNN during its coverage of the air raid sirens in Kyiv somehow found a way to make it even worse with this terrible transition to breaking”.
In fact, there was no transition from the wailing sirens to Applebee’s ad featuring a man in cowboy boots shaking his, uh, booty to a country song. For its part, Applebee’s quickly released a statement that the ad “should never have aired, and we are disappointed with the network’s actions.”
Oliver’s retort was scathing: “It’s deft international diplomacy from the house of both the ‘grilled oriental chicken salad’ and the ’tissy pixie’.”
Ouch.
Of course, CNN isn’t the only news organization treading on a linguistic landmine these days around Russia’s indefensible invasion.
Journalists and commentators have drawn ire from an organization representing journalists in the Middle East for their shocked comments that an invasion of Ukraine affected people who did not seem so different from them, rather than a distant, impoverished nation of darker-skinned humans.
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“We are not talking about Syrians fleeing the bombs of the Syrian regime supported by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, we are talking about Europeans who drive off in cars that look like ours to save their lives,” noted a commentator from French channel FBM TV.
The BBC, CBS, ITV, the Telegraph newspaper and, somewhat improbably, the English language outlet of Al Jazeera, were among others roasted for similar unfortunate language.
At least CBS Senior Foreign Correspondent Charlie D’Agata quickly apologized for his strongly cautioned but still shabby comments that Ukraine “is not a place, with all due respect to me. must, like Iraq or Afghanistan, which has seen conflicts raging for decades. It’s a relatively civilized, relatively European — I also have to choose these words carefully — city, where you wouldn’t expect to that or didn’t expect that to happen.
Such misunderstanding and disinterest in the effects of war on distant people who do not look like Europeans to us is nothing new. Just look at the neglect of journalists during years of the Second Congo War, which began in 1998, involved nine countries and more than two dozen paramilitaries, and killed up to 5.4 million people during its first decade. Parallel conflicts continue to kill and displace many people in this vast central African country, but you won’t hear much about it in Western news.
But Ukraine, which has caught the attention of many for its impacts on the European continent, the first major conflagration since World War II. Some just don’t know how to talk about it without coming off as racists and colonialists.
CNN’s faux pas is easy enough to fix: Don’t run ads in the middle of breaking news coverage, and make sure your transitions aren’t tone-deaf when paying the bills. As always with CNN, major news events are an opportunity to attract large audiences, but usually at the cost of few ads.
News reporting is usually expensive, and covering breaking news during wartime is not only extremely expensive and difficult, but extremely dangerous for reporters in the field, let alone other humans.
For his part, future boss David Zaslav has sent some important signals about CNN’s future over the past few days, though he hasn’t had much to say about his old pal Jeff Zucker, or what’s next. next will happen with CNN or CNN Plus Now as Zucker and his flame, former chief marketing officer Allison Gollus.
Their abrupt departures after their now-too-close relationship went public a few weeks ago left the organization in disarray, particularly around Zucker’s favorite project, the CNN Plus subscription streaming service, supposed to launch in the end of this month.
Some verbal discretion on Zaslav’s part was prudent; after all, the unlikely $43 billion merger between its little Discovery Communications and giant WarnerMedia seems on track, but the deal isn’t done yet.
As a result, when asked directly about the role of information in a merged company, he objected, saying no plan had been made. But then Zaslav launched into an encouraging endorsement of CNN’s coverage during the first hours of the invasion.
“I watched a lot of CNN,” he said. “That’s where you see the difference between a news service that has real, meaningful resources on a global scale, news-gathering resources – the biggest and biggest group of global journalists in any media company, perhaps with the exception of the BBC.”
Zaslav went on to say, “There’s no news organization in the world like CNN that can do what CNN does. It becomes very clear when you go around the world and watch other news channels, where people sit behind desks and give their opinion on what is going on, there is a news network with people in the field with journalists wearing body armor and helmets doing what journalists do best which is fighting to tell the truth in dangerous places so we can all be safe and assess what is happening in the world.
Indeed, it would be interesting to see Tucker Carlson, who had earlier asked, “Why shouldn’t I be cheering on Russia?” What I am,” donning the bulletproof vest and using his alleged excellent relationship with the Kremlin to cover the invasion up close, presumably from a safe, undisclosed location in Donetsk or even 25 kilometers north of Kiev. It probably won’t happen.
Regardless of Carlson’s latest evolving stance on his Russian friends, Zaslav’s firm endorsement of CNN is in stark contrast to comments Zaslav’s puppet master John Malone made a few months ago: “I’d love to see CNN going back to the type of journalism that it started with, and in fact, journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.
Tell that to CNN reporters wearing body armor and helmets showing videos of dead children, bombed-out buildings and still-smoldering burnt-out tanks. I’m sure it would be “unique and refreshing” for them.
In his minor defense, Malone also said in November that CNN’s post-merger dumping would be “the coward’s way out.”
As a result, this week Zaslav clarified another key question: who will run CNN and the merged company’s other news operations now that Zucker is gone, naming Chris Licht – a veteran producer of shows like CBS this morningThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert and MSNBC morning joe — as chairman and CEO of newly renamed CNN Global.
It’s too early to tell if CNN’s on-the-ground approach to covering the war will translate into viewership and ratings. It’s certainly boosting the network’s reputation (other than Appleby’s gaffe) in the early days.
It’s much harder to predict how this will translate to CNN’s identity, direction and audience in the months to come, after the merger and after the launch of CNN Plus.
Even before the Zucker/Gollust/Chris Cuomo departures, the network was struggling to find a new identity amid plummeting post-election ratings. The ideological edge that had driven CNN audiences may not work going forward, even if the US midterm elections heat up.
But triangulating in the middle, as some suggest compared to competitors Fox News and MSNBC, also has its challenges. As former progressive Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower liked to say, there’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Whether this is a viable post-merger CNN location will be something to watch.
