CNN+, Twitter and the State of Mass Media

Greetings my fellow Americans! In my younger days I did a considerable amount of traveling in and around the United States as part of my employment. During that time (as far back as the early 1990s) there was nary an airport which was not blaring a steady stream of CNN from virtually every monitor or flat screen within earshot of every waiting area near every gate, in every terminal.

In those earliest days we also had no cell phones or ear buds to provide viewing or listening alternatives, so unless you could read and not be distracted by the latest breaking news or headline (or you could sit in one of the bars and watch sports), CNN, “the most trusted name in news” (with frequent interstices of the voice of James Earl Jones in their programming to validate this) was it, even as recently as ten years ago.

CNN (the Cable News Network) was truly the first, and only, of its kind for most of the first ten years of its existence, as the number of television viewing options exploded with the advent of cable TV. 24x7x365, up-to-the-minute “news and information” programming had theretofore been relegated to AM radio, so CNN was truly the pioneer of the visual format in this space. It revolutionized the market for, and consumption of, national and world news reporting.

As the trailblazer, and longtime leader, CNN won a sweetheart deal with the FAA to be the exclusive provider of news-and-information content in airports, and the ability to reach tens-, if not hundreds-of-thousands of travelers waiting for their next flights. What would be especially attention-grabbing were the sensational “breaking news” alerts which would captivate the masses within these airline hubs, and spark conversations among the patrons about how traumatic or disastrous such events were. And since the stream was non-stop (save for the occasional commercial block), these narratives could be repeated many times over the course of a news day, week, month, etc.

CNN has been a staple of “basic” cable since the birth of that industry and, to my knowledge, has never been excluded from, nor have any customers been offered to opt out of, receiving CNN if they want any service at all. And while there likely was a time when CNN truly was the leader in consumed news (by sheer subscriber and publicly streamed volume alone), that they are still counted among the elites in news and information has been due, in no small part, to their subsidization by government and cable TV providers who automatically include CNN among the other 500+ channels being funneled to “basic” subscribers.

Enter CNN+, the soon-to-be-short-lived “streaming” offshoot of its long-time broadcast parent, and completely dependent on a paid subscriber base as a standalone service, i.e., venturing into revenue-generating territory never trod by said parent. Be it through arrogance, incompetence, or some combination thereof, the CNN company believed there were actually enough people out there who thought they were still “the most trusted name in news,” and would be willing to spend their own money to receive news and information from them. There would be no subsidies and no creative packaging, but rather sheer desire to vicariously experience the world more fully through the lens of the narrative-crafters at CNN.

Given that a substantial portion of CNN revenue comes from government subsidies and large corporate channel-bundling and advertising, that they are, and have been, among the leading purveyors of anti-American, socialist, propagandistic narratives should be of little surprise. That they really thought the average private consumer of news would be willing to pay to be constantly lectured to and made to feel guilty for being a citizen of the United States is the more curious. The abject failure of CNN+ exposes a hubris here which also transcends CNN, as the likes of MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC (and even Fox News to some degree) rely on similar volumes of corporate advertising and de facto inclusion of their programming in the packages offered by “cable” TV providers.

And then there’s social media, which while largely available to subscribers at no additional charge beyond those paid for the internet communication services through which these applications are utilized, the largest of which have also become tools for toeing the lines of their financial benefactors to spread propaganda and exercise censorship of content which runs counter to state-approved narratives.

While it remains to be seen whether the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk will result in a true liberation of that platform from the likes of such propagandistic censorship, there can be little doubt that “follow the money” needs to be the mantra we all ascribe to when determining who to trust to “inform” us of what’s happening outside of our own homes. As long as providers of news and information are either for-profit and/or government-owned (e.g., NPR), the objectivity of any narratives or reporting put forth by any of them will always be subject to the scrutiny and permissiveness of those funding those organizations. To believe otherwise is both naïve and dangerous

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