Direction of Mainstream Media

Interesting, brief article on why a CNN bureau chief quit.

CNN's former bureau chief in Beijing and Tokyo has acknowledged that she resigned from the cable news network because she "had been growing increasingly frustrated with the direction CNN was going in." In an interview appearing in the current Columbia Journalism Review, Rebecca MacKinnon remarked that she had become aware of a trend toward "less interest in serious news and ... towards more infotainment, from anything but a war zone." She said that as "neither a war correspondent nor an infotainment news bunny," she was forced to reexamine her place at the network, especially after being told things by her superiors like, "Your expertise is getting in the way of doing the kind of stories we want to see on CNN" and "We'd like you to cover the region more like a tourist." MacKinnon said that when she came to the network in 1992, when it was still owned by Ted Turner, it placed heavy emphasis on international stories. "There was this real feeling that if a story mattered, we should cover it. If you had a strong argument to that effect and you could pitch that to Ted Turner, the funds would be there, because he viewed CNN as something other than a product that you just sell on the market for profit maximization. He saw it as something more socially significant than that." All that, she said, changed after the merger with Time Warner, when the attitude became, "if you couldn't justify high ratings with a story, increasingly, they didn't want to spend money on it. Of course, it's hard to know in advance sometimes."

Cover the region like a tourist? The mainstream media is disintegrating under the pressure of ratings. This is not news. But it is interesting to see the decay documented and acknowledged.