and today's prize for gross stupidity goes to . . .

[realthog]

. . . them doughty bean-counters at the infotainment channel CNN:

CNN Cuts Entire Science, Tech Team

By Curtis Brainard

CNN, the Cable News Network, announced yesterday that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers.

“We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit,” said CNN spokesperson Barbara Levin. “Now that the bulk of our environmental coverage is being offered through the Planet in Peril franchise, which is produced by the Anderson Cooper 360 program, there is no need for a separate unit.”

For more on this, see the report in Columbia Journalism Review. The BBC World News channel should, with luck, be a part of your cable/satellite tv package.

 

Comments

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I don't mind his annoying habits: it's the fact that he's an incompetent journalist that bothers me. He seems simply not to understand the issues of the day -- any day. I've lost count of the number of times (and besides it was a long time ago that I abandoned CNN in despair) I've seen him completely miss the point when interviewing someone, or fail to ask important questions that so thunderingly obviously should be asked, or allow to pass the most blatant of lies without the slightest quibble from himself . . . or even the slightest sign of any awareness on his part that some sleazebag has just perpetrated an outrageous whopper.

Compare him with, say, the BBC's Stephen Sackur, who has his own irritating habits but is always absolutely on the ball, has always done his research thoroughly, never allows anyone to get away with anything, and has no compunction about telling even the most powerful people in the world if they're talking bullshit, and you begin to see why, if Blitzer were on fire, I wouldn't . . . oh, Pam's just called me for supper . . .

The thing I'm trying to stress is that incompetence in journalism matters, especially if the venue is somewhere like CNN (or the New York Times, etc.) that large numbers of people regard as in some way authoritative. If the US news media had been on the ball during the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, who can tell how different and how much better this nation's history might have been. Had the US news media been competent in the lead up to the Iraq invasion -- competent even to the level of reading what was in the European newspapers -- then that whole miserable carnage might not have happened.

So I get very, very, very angry and upset indeed when the twerps running CNN carry on paying millions to glamorous incompetents and pay for that idiocy by firing science staff at a time when the most important issue facing our species is a scientific one: the myriad aspects of global warming.

Harrumph!

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, then there's THAT!


no, really, I do understand and agree with it. I was just talking superficially and I'm sorry.....*slinks away*