Transcript
MANOUSH ZOMORODI: From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I’m Manoush Zomorodi, filling in for Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Lost Malaysian Airliner Flight MH370 is being covered by CNN. In fact, Flight 370, and nothing else, is being covered by CNN. Over the past seven weeks, the channel has all but passed on the collapse of the Mideast peace process, a deadly mudslide in Washington State and a Russian land grab in Ukraine. The monomania has made the channel an object of ridicule.
[CLIP]:
JON STEWART: Let’s recap CNN’s last week in the missing Malaysian Airliner coverage: There is a lot of non-Malaysian airliner garbage in the ocean –
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
- the heavier of which sinks -
[LAUGHTER]
- the lighter of which floats.
[LAUGHTER]
Let us go now to Wolf Blitzer in the new “DUH!” room.
[LAUGHTER] [END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Somehow, unchastened by the mockery, perhaps because it is now running a slightly less distant third, after Fox and MSNBC, CNN is showing no signs of moving off the airplane story, that, even though it is thinking aloud about the frightening open-endedness of it all.
[CLIP]:
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Could any of the investigators’ assumptions up until this point have been wrong? Of course, that’s what many people are asking. And what does this mean if they are going to have to recalculate the entire search at some point?
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: CNN’s long slide from hard news to morbid infotainment has caught the attention of Andrew Tyndall, who runs the television news monitoring site, The Tyndall report. He says that the cable channel risks losing its reputation, or what little remains of it, as a news organization. Andrew, welcome back to the show.
ANDREW TYNDALL: Glad to be here.
BOB GARFIELD: To be fair, Flight 370 is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in tragedy, heavily covered by all the cable channels and major networks, no?
ANDREW TYNDALL: Absolutely. It’s a marvelous news story, headline grabbing, tugs at the heartstrings and is absolutely mystifying to anybody who hears about it.
BOB GARFIELD: But?
ANDREW TYNDALL: But it’s one plane that went missing, and it went missing six weeks ago. You know, it’s not just there’s very little happening. This is television, and there are very few pictures happening. There’s actually nothing to see. CNN has been forced to resort to studios full of experts opinionating on what might have happened to the plane but testing various theories to see whether they hold water or not.
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, it’s opinionating, speculating, in some cases, I would say fantasizing.
ANDREW TYNDALL: Or, you know, engaging in astrophysics. I mean, what happened if the plane was sucked into a black hole?
[CLIP]:
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: A lot of people have been asking about that, about black holes and on and on and on and all of these conspiracy theories. And no, it’s preposterous, but is – is it preposterous, do you think, Mary?
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Is it preposterous, Andrew?
ANDREW TYNDALL: Yes, it is preposterous, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, now the explanation for all of this apparently is just the retooling of the channel by its relatively new president, Jeff Zucker, for competitive advantage against Fox News Channel and MSNBC, who week after week, for years, have just been eating CNN's lunch.
ANDREW TYNDALL: Zucker, right, to run CNN, and he said he wanted a fresh definition of what news was. In other words, it wasn’t – news didn’t consist of policy and politics but of fresh subject matter. And what we’ve seen is a move towards news which isn’t to do with policy or politics, but is to do with excitement, mystery and human interest.
BOB GARFIELD: In his takedown, John Stewart on The Daily Show [LAUGHS] showed that the CNN was so bereft of stuff to talk about concerning Flight 370 that they actually deployed their future reporter, Jeanne Moos, to do a piece about another CNN reporter, Martin Savidge spending a month in a flight simulator. But that's not all. They also interviewed Brian Stelter, their media show host and media correspondent, essentially to defend the network against criticism from the likes of Stewart and us. Let’s hear what he has to say.
[CLIP]:
BRIAN STELTER: We used to live in a world of media scarcity, but now we live in this world of media infinity, where you can find whatever you're interested in on the internet and on television. As a result, it makes more sense to have channels like CNN or Fox or MSNBC that are focused on one story at a time, when there's a big news story happening.
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: He went on to cite a Pew poll which said that about half of the public thinks they’re getting just about the right amount of coverage on Flight 370.
ANDREW TYNDALL: There are always two concerns that a news organization needs to have. It needs to have the immediate concern, am I addressing stories and issues that are of interest to my audience? And it has a long-range concern, am I maintaining my reputations as the go-to place for legitimate news gathering? The danger of pandering to ratings is if you do so at the expense of your long-range reputation, then it will do you no good at all.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, there is an odd kind of historical irony about all of this. While I'm perfectly happy to find fault with CNN for betraying its news roots, actually, it’s going back directly to its news roots. Tell me when CNN broke out, to begin with.
ANDREW TYNDALL: CNN broke out in the early 90s, 25 years ago, and it did so with two major stories. One was a legitimate major news story which deserved 24-hour coverage, and that was the war to get Iraq out of Kuwait. The second one, which got just as much coverage, was a story that is really similar in its format and structure to the Malaysia Airline story, and that was the trial of OJ Simpson. The trouble is the difference between the OJ Simpson trial and the narrative structure of the Malaysian Airline story is CNN executives were certain that the OJ Simpson trial would actually have a climax, which is a verdict. What’s happening here is the story is just carrying on, and on and on, and it’s just going to tail off into nothingness, and they’ve got no way of tying it up in a nice neat bow.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, on the subject of nothingness, I have to say, Andrew, I think you’re being harsh. In some ways, the CNN coverage has been illuminating. I want to play something that holds an education.
[CLIP]:
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: By the time you get to the bottom of the Indian Ocean anywhere out here, you're going to be so deep that there is really no light whatsoever. It's going to be flat-out dark down there.
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: It turns out the bottom of the ocean is dark and, in the dark, it’s hard to see things.
ANDREW TYNDALL: But Bob, is it as dark as a black hole?
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Andrew, thank you.
ANDREW TYNDALL: You’re welcome, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Andrew Tyndall is the publisher or The Tyndall Report.
MANOUSH ZOMORODI: From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I’m Manoush Zomorodi, filling in for Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Lost Malaysian Airliner Flight MH370 is being covered by CNN. In fact, Flight 370, and nothing else, is being covered by CNN. Over the past seven weeks, the channel has all but passed on the collapse of the Mideast peace process, a deadly mudslide in Washington State and a Russian land grab in Ukraine. The monomania has made the channel an object of ridicule.
[CLIP]:
JON STEWART: Let’s recap CNN’s last week in the missing Malaysian Airliner coverage: There is a lot of non-Malaysian airliner garbage in the ocean –
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
- the heavier of which sinks -
[LAUGHTER]
- the lighter of which floats.
[LAUGHTER]
Let us go now to Wolf Blitzer in the new “DUH!” room.
[LAUGHTER] [END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Somehow, unchastened by the mockery, perhaps because it is now running a slightly less distant third, after Fox and MSNBC, CNN is showing no signs of moving off the airplane story, that, even though it is thinking aloud about the frightening open-endedness of it all.
[CLIP]:
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Could any of the investigators’ assumptions up until this point have been wrong? Of course, that’s what many people are asking. And what does this mean if they are going to have to recalculate the entire search at some point?
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: CNN’s long slide from hard news to morbid infotainment has caught the attention of Andrew Tyndall, who runs the television news monitoring site, The Tyndall report. He says that the cable channel risks losing its reputation, or what little remains of it, as a news organization. Andrew, welcome back to the show.
ANDREW TYNDALL: Glad to be here.
BOB GARFIELD: To be fair, Flight 370 is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in tragedy, heavily covered by all the cable channels and major networks, no?
ANDREW TYNDALL: Absolutely. It’s a marvelous news story, headline grabbing, tugs at the heartstrings and is absolutely mystifying to anybody who hears about it.
BOB GARFIELD: But?
ANDREW TYNDALL: But it’s one plane that went missing, and it went missing six weeks ago. You know, it’s not just there’s very little happening. This is television, and there are very few pictures happening. There’s actually nothing to see. CNN has been forced to resort to studios full of experts opinionating on what might have happened to the plane but testing various theories to see whether they hold water or not.
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, it’s opinionating, speculating, in some cases, I would say fantasizing.
ANDREW TYNDALL: Or, you know, engaging in astrophysics. I mean, what happened if the plane was sucked into a black hole?
[CLIP]:
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: A lot of people have been asking about that, about black holes and on and on and on and all of these conspiracy theories. And no, it’s preposterous, but is – is it preposterous, do you think, Mary?
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Is it preposterous, Andrew?
ANDREW TYNDALL: Yes, it is preposterous, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, now the explanation for all of this apparently is just the retooling of the channel by its relatively new president, Jeff Zucker, for competitive advantage against Fox News Channel and MSNBC, who week after week, for years, have just been eating CNN's lunch.
ANDREW TYNDALL: Zucker, right, to run CNN, and he said he wanted a fresh definition of what news was. In other words, it wasn’t – news didn’t consist of policy and politics but of fresh subject matter. And what we’ve seen is a move towards news which isn’t to do with policy or politics, but is to do with excitement, mystery and human interest.
BOB GARFIELD: In his takedown, John Stewart on The Daily Show [LAUGHS] showed that the CNN was so bereft of stuff to talk about concerning Flight 370 that they actually deployed their future reporter, Jeanne Moos, to do a piece about another CNN reporter, Martin Savidge spending a month in a flight simulator. But that's not all. They also interviewed Brian Stelter, their media show host and media correspondent, essentially to defend the network against criticism from the likes of Stewart and us. Let’s hear what he has to say.
[CLIP]:
BRIAN STELTER: We used to live in a world of media scarcity, but now we live in this world of media infinity, where you can find whatever you're interested in on the internet and on television. As a result, it makes more sense to have channels like CNN or Fox or MSNBC that are focused on one story at a time, when there's a big news story happening.
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: He went on to cite a Pew poll which said that about half of the public thinks they’re getting just about the right amount of coverage on Flight 370.
ANDREW TYNDALL: There are always two concerns that a news organization needs to have. It needs to have the immediate concern, am I addressing stories and issues that are of interest to my audience? And it has a long-range concern, am I maintaining my reputations as the go-to place for legitimate news gathering? The danger of pandering to ratings is if you do so at the expense of your long-range reputation, then it will do you no good at all.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, there is an odd kind of historical irony about all of this. While I'm perfectly happy to find fault with CNN for betraying its news roots, actually, it’s going back directly to its news roots. Tell me when CNN broke out, to begin with.
ANDREW TYNDALL: CNN broke out in the early 90s, 25 years ago, and it did so with two major stories. One was a legitimate major news story which deserved 24-hour coverage, and that was the war to get Iraq out of Kuwait. The second one, which got just as much coverage, was a story that is really similar in its format and structure to the Malaysia Airline story, and that was the trial of OJ Simpson. The trouble is the difference between the OJ Simpson trial and the narrative structure of the Malaysian Airline story is CNN executives were certain that the OJ Simpson trial would actually have a climax, which is a verdict. What’s happening here is the story is just carrying on, and on and on, and it’s just going to tail off into nothingness, and they’ve got no way of tying it up in a nice neat bow.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, on the subject of nothingness, I have to say, Andrew, I think you’re being harsh. In some ways, the CNN coverage has been illuminating. I want to play something that holds an education.
[CLIP]:
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: By the time you get to the bottom of the Indian Ocean anywhere out here, you're going to be so deep that there is really no light whatsoever. It's going to be flat-out dark down there.
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: It turns out the bottom of the ocean is dark and, in the dark, it’s hard to see things.
ANDREW TYNDALL: But Bob, is it as dark as a black hole?
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Andrew, thank you.
ANDREW TYNDALL: You’re welcome, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Andrew Tyndall is the publisher or The Tyndall Report.