Tag Archives: Cable News Network (CNN)

Taking advantage of the wide open blogosphere

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My (Freedom of Expression’s) very first entry, “Blogs self-regulate to stay credible,” pointed out that bloggers have a vested interest in being honest if they want to build and maintain an audience.

But when money is involved, it seems bloggers might need something more than mere self-policing.

Someone identified as “Johntw” posted a bogus story October 3 saying Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, sending the company’s shares plunging more than 10 percent before Apple could quash the rumors.

The story appeared on CNN’s iReport, which some, such as TechNewsWorld’s Renay San Miguel, believe helped add to its credibility. Yet CNN only requires a valid e-mail address in order to post, and the only other information it can now provide to investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission is the sender’s IP address.

If “Johntw” was doing some day trading on Wall Street, it is estimated he/she could have netted as much as $21 million by buying up Apple’s temporarily devalued shares with the knowledge that they would go right back up once the truth was exposed.

San Miguel, as a former CNN anchor, predicts that because of the Apple fiasco, the staff at iReport will now be vetting all submissions from the public.

“It may be a hassle and colossal time-suck to do it, and the company certainly won’t make a big deal about it, but it will do it. Because in the end, the people in charge of the network really do care about credibility,” he says.

Where do you think the line should be drawn? Can the blogosphere be a self-regulated news source or should measures be put in place to prevent people from exploiting its free-wheeling nature?

Is The Daily Show news in disguise?

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The Daily Show, a wildly popular program on the U.S. Comedy Central network, offers an alternative to the mainstream news media – “alternative” because it lampoons the news rather than reports it.

The show won television’s Peabody awards for its 2000 and 2004 U.S. elections coverage. By early 2008, its satirical newslike reports on public figures and current events were reaching an average audience of 1.8 million. Compare those figures to Fox News’ primetime Hannity & Colmes at 1.9 million and CNN’s highest-rated show, Election Center, at 1.2 million, and you’ll start to appreciate the comedy show’s hold on American audiences.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), which recently compared The Daily Show’s 2007 news content with that of mainstream news programs, concluded it “closely resembles the news agenda of a number of cable news programs as well as talk radio.”

PEJ also found the show might have a purpose beyond political humor. “The Daily Show performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature – getting people to think critically about the public square,” in the tradition of American newspaper satirists Art Buchwald and H.L. Mencken.

Like a news show, the program regularly lines up prominent elected officials for interviews, including presidential contenders Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, but any casual viewer quickly recognizes the main purpose of the show is comedy. Some major news stories are neglected, probably because host Jon Stewart and his crew couldn’t find anything funny to say about them.

Stewart, who maintains his program is solely for entertainment, rejects any journalistic responsibility. After being attacked on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004 for not asking tough questions in his interview with presidential candidate John Kerry, he seemed bewildered the CNN hosts were “look[ing] to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.” Stewart said news programs, which exist to present news, were presenting theater at a time when journalists needed to take their profession more seriously.

Does the average viewer of The Daily Show know nothing about the global food crisis and everything about the “man-sized safe” in Vice President Cheney’s office? PEJ’s survey data suggest the show’s regular viewers are highly informed, perhaps the “most likely to score in the highest percentile on knowledge of current affairs.”

Obviously, Comedy Central is not these viewers’ only source of news, but it certainly takes their knowledge to a new and funnier level: The Daily Show continues to bill itself as “even better than being informed.”

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CNN Solicits Citizen Journalism

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In 2007 CNN began inviting its viewers to send in their reports for possible broadcast; the response was overwhelming. The network’s iReport.com Web site, launched February 2008, now makes every submission – more than 100,000 so far – available for view or comment.

Unless the material will be broadcast on CNN or CNN.com, the network completely absolves itself of responsibility for the online collection of “unedited, unfiltered news.” Basically, the network trusts its iReport.com audience to decide for itself what is accurate.

“Don’t kid yourselves. This content is not pre-vetted or pre-read by CNN. This is your platform. In some journalistic circles, this is considered disruptive, even controversial! But we know the news universe is changing. We know that even here, at CNN, we can’t be everywhere, all the time following all the stories you care about. So, we give you iReport.com. You will program it, you will police it; you will decide what’s important, what’s interesting, what’s news,” says the site moderator, adding her hope that the site will raise the bar on user-generated material beyond the “dancing monkeys and cute cats and dogs” found elsewhere.

However, the site does have its share of pet tricks, weddings and school reports, and observers may very well wonder what the real value is, and what separates iReport from, say, YouTube.

That’s why the “Need Help?” section on the lower left column is interesting. Its advice on what makes a good story or how to take a good photograph or video is very basic, not intimidating and seems perfect for a younger person who is just testing the journalism waters.

So there is a special value to iReport.com when you consider that amateur reporters, who are producing material to get it distributed on one of the world’s largest networks, are learning about and paying closer attention to journalism standards – thorough, accurate and original reporting – than they otherwise might have.

Have you submitted any “citizen journalism” reports? If so, why?