Interesting to see the latest story on CNN and how it is having problems with ratings. This is not a surprise as it reflects the changes going on with power being shifted to the people. I don;t think CNN knows why it’s lower ratings are happening. (They couldn;t figure out the occupy wall street movement either:)
CNN used to be able to claim the idea ……..CNN ……..the most “trusted” name for news”. But that changed during the lead up to the second Gulf war. There was very poor investigative journalism in all the main media at that time. The important questions were not being asked. For example: No one asked how “anyone” could prove that they didn;t have weapons of mass destruction and yet that is what the world was asking Iraq to prove. It was an important question that was never addressed. When Iraq said it didn;t have any weapons of mass destruction… it was reported over and over again that Iraq must be hiding it.
CNN …..as well as most major news organizations……did an apalling job of covering that issue and without diligent questioning, we know where that led us.
Since the last Gulf war, there has been a surge in social media. One is more likely to hear about an earthquake or a tsunami on twitter before CNN. People can report and show photos that tell the story imediately without the political spin that goes along with the major news outlets. For example: When I was in Iraq ten years ago covering the horrible effects of sanctions on the Iraqi people, I tried to get the attention of the main world news media people in Baghdad. I was told by the large world news organizations there that they would “love” to tell the story, but their head office would not broadcast it. I was told this by “several” news organzations in Baghdad. And so the story never got out. There was no debate possible because that was not the story head office wanted to tell the world. The obvious truth visible to anyone on the ground in Iraq was never broadcast because it didn;t match the head office vision of what the story should be.
My point is that things have changed and I believe that CNN is now irrelevant. They have been leapfrogged. People blog and tweet imediate news stories and the “cloud” decides if it is real. One person blogging or tweeting is questionable but if hundreds or more start reporting with similar stories and photos then a picture emerges that can be “trusted”.
This is the exciting thing about any chance of hope for peace in our world. We no longer rely on the main news organizations for our understanding of what is going on in our world. Our politicians can no longer “spin” things the way they want us to see it. When I was in Iraq, I found that my Canadian government (Lloyd Axworthy’s office) was giving out information about Iraq that was wrong. When I confronted Lloyd Axworthy’s office on several points, I was told to the effect, ” Deryk, we have so many conflicts going on in the world that we couldn;t possibly be expected to keep track of them all”. I found that shocking because in 2002, I had been presented with a UNICEF report pointing out that several hundred thousand children had died as a “direct result of our sanctions”.
