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They're really desperate for clicks and that has made the quality of their news really decline. Their pages are overrun by ads and even pop-ups now and that mak

They're really desperate for clicks and that has made the quality of their news really decline. Their pages are overrun by ads and even pop-ups now and that makes them really look like a tabloid. Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links, and that really cheapens the brand of news delivery they had. In a highly competitive market, the key to winning is not to imitate competition, it's to decrease overhead costs and to deliver a higher quality product, but in the age of social media, everyone is losing sight of that because of the allure of instant virality and it's getting really toxic to normal human beings more and more every day. They regularly forgo important local and international stories unless they're comical or sensational and it's contradictory to provision of news, and that makes them competitive with every single commentator in podcasts and on social media, which is silly because CNN has far mor resources than that competition. Too many of their stories are subtle ads for big industry products as well, which also erodes trust in their brand and increases potential for conflicts of interest in reporting objectively. It's a terrible tragedy that they really watch reddit mostly to determine what is newsworthy, because Reddit and users there all have agendas of their own... The downvote/upvote system is not transparent and it has been totally compromised by brigading. News stories, especially online should not be competing with each other for noteworthiness, because everyone has a different set of things that are relevant to them... Now we simply have one pipeline for everyone, which is taken over by commercial or sensational interests, and quickly put on mute once it becomes boring or too repetitive, despite lives being deeply affected (e.g. Water pollution in Flint, Michigan). This is why CNN is suffering a decline in revenue and spikes in hype during a time they could really shine most... They're wearing social media blinders instead of returning to the traditional book on news coverage.... That and all the pharmaceutical ads perhaps... (I am not a journalist FTR).

0des 4y ago
> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links Sometimes I wonder if some folks want news, or just something to confirm their biases.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Most political positions are really about group membership and we want to read things that re-affirm that we belong to those groups. The easiest way to do this is to attack some "other".
  - rabuse 4y ago
    It's really just exploiting our biological tribal mentality. It'll never go away.
    - 0des 4y ago
      The most uncomfortable of ignored truths
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - derevaunseraun 4y ago
    This is a platitude that gets parroted way too often. It's like saying the highest function of humanity is eating and shitting The point of a political position is catalyzing political change, developing consensus, and holding interest groups accountable. Reducing news or politics in general to sensationalism just encourages disengagement
- tunesmith 4y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if folks want nutritious food, or just potato chips. It's the same sort of thing, I think. There's what we say we want, and there's how we behave, but (what is often lost on advertisers) how we behave is not always an indication of what we actually want. I'll eat potato chips, but I really do want nutritious food.
  - rubicon33 4y ago
akira2501 4y ago
> but in the age of social media, I honestly doubt that social media has anything to do with it, but rather the consolidation of ownership of news sources over this same period of time and an ongoing desire to have very high ad sales rates while having rock bottom news room costs. This is simply the result of that financial calculus playing out over the past two decades.
bastardoperator 4y ago
Cable news rots brains. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, OAN... trash in, trash out. Personally I'd like to see the fairness doctrine reinstated. You don't get call yourself news when you're really an entertainment faux outrage machine.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  The fairness doctrine never applied to cable in the first place, and would be fairly likely to be held as violating the First Amendment if you tried to expand it to do so (it would be a reasonably likely outcome merely from bringing back the old broadcast-only one, too).
- throwaway92394 4y ago
  > Personally I'd like to see the fairness doctrine reinstated That's not going to help at all with online media as that's only broadcast licenses which to my knowledge only affects operators of a broadcast TV, Audio Radio (as in AM/FM/SSB/etc), or other radio station - meaning the internet, cable, and satellite (not sure how satellite broadcast licensing works) are unaffected by this. Also it only affects the holder - ie DishTV - not the channels themselves that DishTV is transmitting And I have no idea how you adapt this for the internet - broadcast licenses were relatively hard to get, relatively expensive to operate, and generally unavailable to most people, edit: and had limited availability. With the internet anyone can make a blog for free in 5 minutes. EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here. To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it. To my knowledge the FCC cannot enforce this for cable/internet - I think that would have to be the FTC. But I really doubt this be found to not violate the 1st amendment with the internet. EDIT 2: > The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the doctrine. It looks like the supreme court at the time ruled that because of the limited number of broadcast stations it made sense for the FCC to regulate it in this manor. Because of the lack of scarcity of resources for the internet, I highly doubt the FTC would be allowed to do the same.
  - agiacalone 4y ago
    > EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here. > To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it. Amateur Radio Extra here. I have a tiny bit of insight into this. Back in WW1, the radio spectrum became the property of the US military and the DoD actually "leases" spectrum to the federal government through the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was a handshake agreement with the political parties of the day and enforced by FCC policy. The FCC is the regulatory body for airwaves. So the spectrum is a public good in the sense that it is 100% owned by the US military for military purposes and it only grants radio spectrum to the rest of the FCC that it doesn't care about. You can actually go to prison for using radio spectrum that you're not allowed to use (I have never actually heard of it happening...but it is theoretically possible). Edit: I should also add, that 1st amendment rights DO NOT APPLY on the airwaves. The FCC has 100% control of regulating what you can and cannot say or do on them.
raverbashing 4y ago
> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links, So, like that entertainment channel with "News" on the name that was on judicial record saying that, for one of their commentators, "his audience doesn’t expect him to report facts"? But for some reason it's not seen as a negative there by its main audience? (whereas for CNN it is seen as more negative?)
- colpabar 4y ago
  just because someone doesn't explicitly say something is bad doesn't mean they think it's good, you are just assuming that for some reason. the thread is about CNN, so he commented on CNN.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Who's saying it's not seen as a negative? This is just whataboutism and it doesn't even make sense. We are talking about CNN By the way, most opinion/commentator shows aren't expected to report facts. They are by design an opinion piece, where conjecture and "analysis" (as bad as it can be) are normal. It's just not the "own" you think it is, especially since it's a standard defense against claims of defamation. Of all the things to criticize and dislike Fox News or Tucker Carlson for, this one just isn't it. I don't get why this "gotcha" in particular is so often used when there is no shortage of actually valid arguments against Fox News.
secabeen 4y ago
> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links, and that really cheapens the brand of news delivery they had. We lost some real valuable metadata about news from the print era, opinion pieces were limited to Column 1 and the last few pages of section A in most major publications. They were sometimes even in a different font. You knew instinctively that the content you were reading was held to a different standard than the main content. It would really help if we somehow bring that metadata back in a video and online environment.
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  I think this is why some people have made whole successful careers in sub-niches of curated news: John Oliver, Fareed Zakaria, etc. etc. When you watch something that one of them makes, they (or someone connected to them) have creative control over the curation, and it gets attached to their reputation. So, if I hear something on CNN, I have near zero indication about its quality. As a result, I don't read or watch CNN literally ever, unless some other curated source refers it to me for some reason. But if I watch John Oliver or Fareed Zakaria, I know there's going to be a much higher than usual standard for quality of curation, analysis, interest/relevance, etc.
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    While I don't necessarily agree that either of those examples are free from having an agenda, I would absolutely agree that they present a clearer picture and are of a higher quality than CNN or most news outlets in their comprehensiveness. What I find concerning is the way, through omission or contrivance, these 'full picture' opinion news media organizations can manipulate the storyline for their agenda and also leave you feeling fully informed. Zakaria and Oliver being in reality organizations and not a sole, independent report. NPR being the most notable version with a distinct slant on the news. To the extent that through a day's listening, a recognizable story arc is defined. Often with tension and resolution, so that the audience feels they have challenged their beliefs, but have ultimately been proven correct in their presuppositions. Fascinating and terrible things.
r6fyhrc5 4y ago
>They regularly forgo important local and international stories unless they're comical or sensational ... I don't know how to tell you this but that's probably because CNN targets an American audience and most Americans don't care about either of those things outside of very narrow circumstances (such as if they're funny or relevant to the individual's concerns). It's not a failing to focus on coverage people will read.
titzer 4y ago
It's all part of the same attention economy dynamic that has infected every corner of digital media, from cable news to Web to mobile. It's a dopamine loop stuck on DEBILITATE
mourinhoalex 4y ago
CNN had very bullish years for business with the Trump administration, now the times have changed and also people, many are exhausted, and want to feel less anxiety when reading and watching the news
zerkten 4y ago
>> They regularly forgo important local and international stories Is there still a bifurcation between CNN and CNN International? It often felt very different to watch CNN in the US compared other countries when I actually watched any TV news (~1990-2005).
bee_rider 4y ago
Reddit has been trying to go public, right? (or have they already?) I guess the quality of the site will drop even lower at that point, probably past the threshold where they can even be misunderstood as being good for determining what is newsworthy.
SamuelAdams 4y ago
FYI, to your first point about ads and pop ups, you can use the lite version. It’s much faster. https://lite.cnn.com/en https://lite.cnn.com/en
madars 4y ago
>Their pages are overrun by ads and even pop-ups now and that makes them really look like a tabloid. True, true! But some engineer there still maintains https://lite.cnn.com/ https://lite.cnn.com/ :-) Also relevant: https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/ https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- latexr 4y ago
  CNN’s is the worse of the three, with respect to switching from the full site to the text version. With NPR and CBC, you look at both URLs for the same story and what needs to change is clear. With CNN’s, no clue.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
asdff 4y ago
Using reddit as a gauge of public opinion blows my mind, especially coming from CNN whose industry means they should know better. People in entertainment and marketing love reddit, but they will tell you flat out its not because of it being a measure of public opinion, but of it being an excellent marketing tool with many opportunities and successes. Its not hard to get a few posts viral in a niche interest subreddit, and have your product practically ordained by the community as a result. It's a marketers forum, and has been that way since the digg migration brought in plenty of fish, if not earlier.
zeruch 4y ago
"Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links" This is one of my biggest pet peeves too. I still only really enjoy reading the FT consistently overall, and The Hill for political news reporting (their op-ed section is 76978726435278 trash fires converging, but their actual journalism stays solid) and a handful of others sparingly, but every major cable news outlet (and certainly all the overtly partisan outlets like Breitbart and Palmer Report) I simply have avoided for years due to its insufferability.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
askin4it 4y ago
Great insight, thanks. Until they get to the heart of the matter and cut out the rot there, nothing will actually change.
fleddr 4y ago
We don't want quality. We want dopamine. Dopamine mattered less in the paper age, with the exception of the frontpage headline, but not even that mattered as most people had a subscription. Once this paper is in your possession, it frankly doesn't matter much which articles you decide to read, it's a package deal. Interestingly, and this behavior is important, you'd probably read a few articles you weren't super enticed to read, but you'll read them anyway since you paid for them. And thus your world view expands across topics, organically and almost accidentally. That package deal is now cut up into tweet-like snacks, where each snack needs to entice you to read it. Unfortunately those playing on our weaknesses work best. A cute cat performs better than a breakthrough paper on climate science. Updates on the Kardashians outperform...anything. Opinions outperform dry facts, both agreeable and disagreeable opinions. Bad news outperforms good news. Naturally, news adjusts to whatever people read the most. Which wasn't needed before (to this extreme degree), but it is now. Even very competent journalists that write excellent articles need to go on Twitter and with screenshots package the most triggering paragraph of the article, otherwise nobody will read it. The other tragedy is the demise of truth or accuracy. As this doesn't matter on social media. The unreasonables always win and things move fast.

0des 4y ago

> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links Sometimes I wonder if some folks want news, or just something to confirm their biases.

vorpalhex 4y ago
Most political positions are really about group membership and we want to read things that re-affirm that we belong to those groups. The easiest way to do this is to attack some "other".
- rabuse 4y ago
  It's really just exploiting our biological tribal mentality. It'll never go away.
  - 0des 4y ago
    The most uncomfortable of ignored truths
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- derevaunseraun 4y ago
  This is a platitude that gets parroted way too often. It's like saying the highest function of humanity is eating and shitting The point of a political position is catalyzing political change, developing consensus, and holding interest groups accountable. Reducing news or politics in general to sensationalism just encourages disengagement
tunesmith 4y ago
Sometimes I wonder if folks want nutritious food, or just potato chips. It's the same sort of thing, I think. There's what we say we want, and there's how we behave, but (what is often lost on advertisers) how we behave is not always an indication of what we actually want. I'll eat potato chips, but I really do want nutritious food.
- rubicon33 4y ago

akira2501 4y ago

> but in the age of social media, I honestly doubt that social media has anything to do with it, but rather the consolidation of ownership of news sources over this same period of time and an ongoing desire to have very high ad sales rates while having rock bottom news room costs. This is simply the result of that financial calculus playing out over the past two decades.

bastardoperator 4y ago

Cable news rots brains. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, OAN... trash in, trash out. Personally I'd like to see the fairness doctrine reinstated. You don't get call yourself news when you're really an entertainment faux outrage machine.

zerocrates 4y ago
The fairness doctrine never applied to cable in the first place, and would be fairly likely to be held as violating the First Amendment if you tried to expand it to do so (it would be a reasonably likely outcome merely from bringing back the old broadcast-only one, too).
throwaway92394 4y ago
> Personally I'd like to see the fairness doctrine reinstated That's not going to help at all with online media as that's only broadcast licenses which to my knowledge only affects operators of a broadcast TV, Audio Radio (as in AM/FM/SSB/etc), or other radio station - meaning the internet, cable, and satellite (not sure how satellite broadcast licensing works) are unaffected by this. Also it only affects the holder - ie DishTV - not the channels themselves that DishTV is transmitting And I have no idea how you adapt this for the internet - broadcast licenses were relatively hard to get, relatively expensive to operate, and generally unavailable to most people, edit: and had limited availability. With the internet anyone can make a blog for free in 5 minutes. EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here. To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it. To my knowledge the FCC cannot enforce this for cable/internet - I think that would have to be the FTC. But I really doubt this be found to not violate the 1st amendment with the internet. EDIT 2: > The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the doctrine. It looks like the supreme court at the time ruled that because of the limited number of broadcast stations it made sense for the FCC to regulate it in this manor. Because of the lack of scarcity of resources for the internet, I highly doubt the FTC would be allowed to do the same.
- agiacalone 4y ago
  > EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here. > To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it. Amateur Radio Extra here. I have a tiny bit of insight into this. Back in WW1, the radio spectrum became the property of the US military and the DoD actually "leases" spectrum to the federal government through the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was a handshake agreement with the political parties of the day and enforced by FCC policy. The FCC is the regulatory body for airwaves. So the spectrum is a public good in the sense that it is 100% owned by the US military for military purposes and it only grants radio spectrum to the rest of the FCC that it doesn't care about. You can actually go to prison for using radio spectrum that you're not allowed to use (I have never actually heard of it happening...but it is theoretically possible). Edit: I should also add, that 1st amendment rights DO NOT APPLY on the airwaves. The FCC has 100% control of regulating what you can and cannot say or do on them.

raverbashing 4y ago

> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links, So, like that entertainment channel with "News" on the name that was on judicial record saying that, for one of their commentators, "his audience doesn’t expect him to report facts"? But for some reason it's not seen as a negative there by its main audience? (whereas for CNN it is seen as more negative?)

colpabar 4y ago
just because someone doesn't explicitly say something is bad doesn't mean they think it's good, you are just assuming that for some reason. the thread is about CNN, so he commented on CNN.
mardifoufs 4y ago
Who's saying it's not seen as a negative? This is just whataboutism and it doesn't even make sense. We are talking about CNN By the way, most opinion/commentator shows aren't expected to report facts. They are by design an opinion piece, where conjecture and "analysis" (as bad as it can be) are normal. It's just not the "own" you think it is, especially since it's a standard defense against claims of defamation. Of all the things to criticize and dislike Fox News or Tucker Carlson for, this one just isn't it. I don't get why this "gotcha" in particular is so often used when there is no shortage of actually valid arguments against Fox News.

secabeen 4y ago

> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links, and that really cheapens the brand of news delivery they had. We lost some real valuable metadata about news from the print era, opinion pieces were limited to Column 1 and the last few pages of section A in most major publications. They were sometimes even in a different font. You knew instinctively that the content you were reading was held to a different standard than the main content. It would really help if we somehow bring that metadata back in a video and online environment.

Enginerrrd 4y ago
I think this is why some people have made whole successful careers in sub-niches of curated news: John Oliver, Fareed Zakaria, etc. etc. When you watch something that one of them makes, they (or someone connected to them) have creative control over the curation, and it gets attached to their reputation. So, if I hear something on CNN, I have near zero indication about its quality. As a result, I don't read or watch CNN literally ever, unless some other curated source refers it to me for some reason. But if I watch John Oliver or Fareed Zakaria, I know there's going to be a much higher than usual standard for quality of curation, analysis, interest/relevance, etc.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  While I don't necessarily agree that either of those examples are free from having an agenda, I would absolutely agree that they present a clearer picture and are of a higher quality than CNN or most news outlets in their comprehensiveness. What I find concerning is the way, through omission or contrivance, these 'full picture' opinion news media organizations can manipulate the storyline for their agenda and also leave you feeling fully informed. Zakaria and Oliver being in reality organizations and not a sole, independent report. NPR being the most notable version with a distinct slant on the news. To the extent that through a day's listening, a recognizable story arc is defined. Often with tension and resolution, so that the audience feels they have challenged their beliefs, but have ultimately been proven correct in their presuppositions. Fascinating and terrible things.

r6fyhrc5 4y ago

>They regularly forgo important local and international stories unless they're comical or sensational ... I don't know how to tell you this but that's probably because CNN targets an American audience and most Americans don't care about either of those things outside of very narrow circumstances (such as if they're funny or relevant to the individual's concerns). It's not a failing to focus on coverage people will read.

titzer 4y ago

It's all part of the same attention economy dynamic that has infected every corner of digital media, from cable news to Web to mobile. It's a dopamine loop stuck on DEBILITATE

mourinhoalex 4y ago

CNN had very bullish years for business with the Trump administration, now the times have changed and also people, many are exhausted, and want to feel less anxiety when reading and watching the news

zerkten 4y ago

>> They regularly forgo important local and international stories Is there still a bifurcation between CNN and CNN International? It often felt very different to watch CNN in the US compared other countries when I actually watched any TV news (~1990-2005).

bee_rider 4y ago

Reddit has been trying to go public, right? (or have they already?) I guess the quality of the site will drop even lower at that point, probably past the threshold where they can even be misunderstood as being good for determining what is newsworthy.

SamuelAdams 4y ago

FYI, to your first point about ads and pop ups, you can use the lite version. It’s much faster. https://lite.cnn.com/en https://lite.cnn.com/en

madars 4y ago

>Their pages are overrun by ads and even pop-ups now and that makes them really look like a tabloid. True, true! But some engineer there still maintains https://lite.cnn.com/ https://lite.cnn.com/ :-) Also relevant: https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/ https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
latexr 4y ago
CNN’s is the worse of the three, with respect to switching from the full site to the text version. With NPR and CBC, you look at both URLs for the same story and what needs to change is clear. With CNN’s, no clue.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

asdff 4y ago

Using reddit as a gauge of public opinion blows my mind, especially coming from CNN whose industry means they should know better. People in entertainment and marketing love reddit, but they will tell you flat out its not because of it being a measure of public opinion, but of it being an excellent marketing tool with many opportunities and successes. Its not hard to get a few posts viral in a niche interest subreddit, and have your product practically ordained by the community as a result. It's a marketers forum, and has been that way since the digg migration brought in plenty of fish, if not earlier.

zeruch 4y ago

"Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links" This is one of my biggest pet peeves too. I still only really enjoy reading the FT consistently overall, and The Hill for political news reporting (their op-ed section is 76978726435278 trash fires converging, but their actual journalism stays solid) and a handful of others sparingly, but every major cable news outlet (and certainly all the overtly partisan outlets like Breitbart and Palmer Report) I simply have avoided for years due to its insufferability.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

askin4it 4y ago

Great insight, thanks. Until they get to the heart of the matter and cut out the rot there, nothing will actually change.

fleddr 4y ago

We don't want quality. We want dopamine. Dopamine mattered less in the paper age, with the exception of the frontpage headline, but not even that mattered as most people had a subscription. Once this paper is in your possession, it frankly doesn't matter much which articles you decide to read, it's a package deal. Interestingly, and this behavior is important, you'd probably read a few articles you weren't super enticed to read, but you'll read them anyway since you paid for them. And thus your world view expands across topics, organically and almost accidentally. That package deal is now cut up into tweet-like snacks, where each snack needs to entice you to read it. Unfortunately those playing on our weaknesses work best. A cute cat performs better than a breakthrough paper on climate science. Updates on the Kardashians outperform...anything. Opinions outperform dry facts, both agreeable and disagreeable opinions. Bad news outperforms good news. Naturally, news adjusts to whatever people read the most. Which wasn't needed before (to this extreme degree), but it is now. Even very competent journalists that write excellent articles need to go on Twitter and with screenshots package the most triggering paragraph of the article, otherwise nobody will read it. The other tragedy is the demise of truth or accuracy. As this doesn't matter on social media. The unreasonables always win and things move fast.