CNN leaves viewers saying ‘Duh’

CNN has just completed an extensive study of their election night coverage. And the findings are heart-stopping. It turns out that grievous mistakes were made.

CNN, without enough data and relying on the “flawed operations” of sketchy exit polls, called states for the incorrect candidate on several occasions. It seems in this closest of presidential races, CNN went as far as calling a state before all of that states’ precincts had even reported yet. Because of this, the network may have misled, misguided, frustrated and flustered the viewers that relied on their allegedly accurate reporting. The shame of it all.

I’m willing to bet that if everyone had read that article at once, all of the Earth’s eardrums would’ve exploded after hearing the cacophonous “Duh” we’d all mutter under our breaths at the same time. This was award-winning journalism to be sure. The article is already a front-runner for the “Yeah, and your point is…?” prize for journalism and the “They spent how much money to discover this?” peace prize. In terms of not-so-stunning pronouncements, this is up there with the jaw-dropping, provocative “Mexican food is bad for you” report from a few years back.

What makes this report even more absurd is the fact that CNN felt the need to hire a panel of experts to “analyze” the election night coverage. They got Jim Risser, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner; Joan Conner, who, as a journalism professor at Columbia, teaches kids how not to make bonehead journalistic errors; and Ben Wattenberg, who works at the American Enterprise Institute and is a “fellow” there.

What I want to know is why they didn’t just hire a bunch of regular “fellows,” all of whom could’ve told you that the multiple retractions and apologies offered up by CNN’s Bernard Shaw and Judy Woodruff that night were not only embarrassing but insulting to viewers as well.

But CNN is effectively the brat in the classroom who points at the other kids and says, “They did it, Teacher!” The closest thing to an outright apology from the other networks came from Tom Brokaw, who delivered the understatement of the year when he declared, “We don’t just have egg on our faces. We have the whole omelet.”

Can’t argue with you there, Tom, but I didn’t see your network hire any experts to examine your face with all sorts of gadgets and calipers to determine the presence of omelet on your faces and the extent to which the omelet resulted in facial coverage. And, in essence, this is the message CNN is trying to send, even if it means restating the obvious. But even though they’re telling us something we already know, CNN knows that by playing media watchdog themselves, they get a leg up on their dazed rivals.
And a leg up is something that CNN needs desperately.

In 1980, the cable news turf was its for the taking. But 20 years and about 600 or so news networks later, CNN’s ratings are feeling the pinch. Compound that with the fact that the Internet gives people whatever news they want, whenever they want it, and CNN starts to look a lot less viable than they were during the heady days of the Gulf War.

The network’s recent announcement that it’s making a slight programming switch to focus more on talk-oriented shows has thus far met with mixed results. Great: “The Spin Room” and “Sports Tonight.” Not so great: “Wolf Blitzer Reports” and “TalkBack Live.”
CNN is praying the ratings for its new format will get a slight boost from this independent study.

If anything, it’ll make them look like bastions of responsibility. Not only do they seem like they care about their reporting methods, but they also get the chance to call the shots regarding the revamping of every other network’s election coverage, whether they think it needs tweaking or not.

Along with every other major news network in America, CNN receives its exit polls, projections and other data from the Voter News Service. The contents of the independent panel’s report place no small amount of blame on VNS for providing unclear data to the networks. And CNN, like an avenging angel, gets to announce that its “continued involvement with VNS is conditional,” pending drastic changes in research methods and an “upgrade and modernization” of the VNS technical capabilities. And if these things don’t happen? “CNN also would support a potential successor organization should VNS fail to meet CNN’s requirements,” crows the report.

All of a sudden, CNN looks as American as a Boy Scout again, still waving the flag for journalism standards. Awwww, CNN — you’d do that for us, the American people? Tee hee, now we feel all squishy inside.

Even though it might as well have been commissioned by Captain Obvious, the study of CNN’s election night coverage shows that the network has taken the first step to ensuring that such a fiasco will never be revisited.

Jack Bullion is a junior English major from Columbia, Mo.
He can be reached at (j.w.bullion@student.tcu.edu).

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