UnNews:CNN claims to be unbiased
 |
UnNews Audio (file info) |
| Listen to this story! | |
Problems playing this file? You might be a dope. |
|
| We have met the enemy, and he is us | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, November 21, 2024, 19:07:59 (UTC) |
| CNN claims to be unbiased | 
|
14 April 2010
NEW YORK CITY, New York -- A CNN executive declared that CNN is unbiased--indeed, uniquely so.
Jon Klein, the president of U.S. operations of the Cable News Network, made the assertion to advertisers in a sales meeting on Tuesday, presumably hoping to use the outlandish statement to distract attention from the network's 42% drop in viewership in the last year. Klein said CNN is in a "category of one" in the way it delivers "non-biased news."
Advertisers pay networks money to reach the viewing public, and tend to pay less when there isn't any.
CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper was also present at the sales meeting. He said he had never been more proud of CNN's neutrality than when it gave totally unbiased coverage to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's penchant for floral arrangements during the recent health care debate. "I am not the guy who said that Barack Obama sent a shiver up his leg and made him forget he was black. That's the guy on that other network. That left-wing network."
The first cable news network has been so notoriously neutral in domestic politics that it spawned a competitor, Fox News, which found it expedient to use the slogan, "Fair and balanced," and thereby drew four times the audience. Being just as uniquely unbiased, UnNews did not ask anyone there for comment.
However, Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, disputed Mr. Klein's assertion. He said, "They are not unbiased. We are unbiased." This reporter could not find anyone with a television who could either confirm or refute that statement.
Sources[edit]
- David Bauder "CNN chief defends its formula of non-biased news". Associated Press, April 14, 2010