In broad terms I'm sympathetic towards CNN. It's the channel Noi and I tend to first turn to when we're trying to follow events from the US, and I think they're at least trying to help us all keep a grip on the importance of facts in this weirdly post-modern phase of history. But there's one thing about the channel that really gets my goat, and that's the frequent ads they run praising their own journalists and commentators. It doesn't do anything for my appreciation of Christiane Amanpour to be told at fairly regular intervals how wonderful she is.
And whilst I'm letting off a small head of steam about this, I wish the anchors would stop telling the reporters in the field how excellent their reporting has been in those embarrassing sequences when they chat amongst themselves. If the reporting is good we are likely to recognise the fact, but the really important thing is that we get accurate and clear reporting - it doesn't need to be 'good' in any other sense. It isn't important that we listen to it being praised. It just needs to be done - to be there for us.
I suppose all this is part of the unhealthy concern with 'affirming' others, which as far as I can tell is an American thing. There's little or none of this on the main British news channels, thank goodness. Or perhaps there is, and I'm managing to tune it out.
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