The Incompetent Side of CNN

Trapped in a hospital the last few days, following knee replacement surgery, boredom became so great that I occasionally switched on the TV and surfed channels. While the selection of programming was limited and awful – I’m not interested in monster trucks or dirty jobs – my only interest was to catch up on the latest news. The choices were Fox News and CNN.

I picked CNN because Fox has no blush of objectivity, truthfulness or accuracy. But what I saw while watching CNN was a cable news outfit that lacks any credible depth of actual news reporting skills. CNN, instead, uses outside, third party resources and paid pundits. CNN has reporters but the reporters don’t report as much as try to interpret the reportorial work done by outside special interest organizations. It’s today’s style of TV news on-the-cheap, a recipe for creating misleading falsehoods and inaccuracy as I witnessed Saturday morning.

For example, CNN relies heavily on FactCheck.org to check the accuracy of statements made by political candidates. While FactCheck.org claims to be non-partisan, its findings are often subjective and not based on concrete data or responsible journalistic standards but rather generalized opinions … sort of the opposite of “facts.” Then, CNN uses an outside pundit or one of its reporters with no expertise in the area to interpret FactCheck.org’s findings during an exchange with a CNN news reader. On top of that, few of CNN’s news readers or “anchors” has much credible depth in journalism training. As a result, it’s like a Marx Brothers comedy routine but with serious overtones of ineptness and irresponsible behavior.

What I witnessed yesterday went like this:

The pundit reported that a Sarah Palin statement during the vice presidential debate was “misleading,” and CNN flashed a large “MISLEADING” banner across the screen.

Then, the pundit reported that while Joe Biden had originally made a statement accurately, what he ended up saying, apparently by mistake, was “false, and a large “FALSE” banner flashed up.

Whereupon the supposed news anchor, T.J. Holmes, said, “So what Biden said during the debates was a ‘lie.’” What???!!! A “lie?” Where did that come from?! Either he had not been listening to the report from FactCheck.org, and simply did not comprehend.

The adlibbed remark by Holmes was a shocking indictment of Senator Biden, and was so outrageously inaccurate that the pundit immediately corrected Holmes while still on the air. Still, Holmes did not appear to grasp the serious nature of what he had said.

For viewers, the damage had been done – a CNN anchorman, T.J. Holmes, had stated that a United States Senator told a “lie” during the debate, which was an untrue remark by Holmes. His comment demonstrates the lack of competence, and amateurish nature of cable news, and … it is a dangerous trend in the news business.

Clearly, Holmes has no credibility as a responsible journalist, in my opinion. He’s just a good-looking reader. Any responsible news organization would fire him immediately. But, what Holmes did is the trend of TV News in America, and a disservice to television news audiences during these contentious, complicated and turbulent times that demand more responsible and professional behavior by the news media.

Filed Under: Featured • News Media • Personal notes

Tags: CNN • debates • journalism • T.J. Holmes