Klein on coverage…
The St. Petersberg Times Eric Deggans has CNN’s Jonathan Klein talking about his network’s Middle East crisis coverage…(via TVNewser)
Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/U.S., said the cable news channel has placed about 100 or so staffers in the region, including anchors and reporters such as Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer and John Roberts.
He said the channel’s news coverage has evolved from scrambling to cover the basic facts of the early conflict to exploring the larger geopolitical questions such as Syria and Iran’s influence on Hezbollah and the United Nations’ role as a monitor.
“Viewers have short attention spans. They tend to tire of a story and they tend to feel they know the story backward and forward, unless a news organization can provide a layered sense of what is behind the story,” he said. “You could cover this as a series of rockets fired between one side and another … (but) we’re trying to combine visceral coverage with analysis from intelligent people and academia.”
Where’s all that hot air coming from - - - Did somebody open the door? NO? Just Jonathan Klein opening his mouth.
Comment by Harvey — July 31, 2006 @ 10:08 pm
CNN’s viewers may have short attention spans, but most of us cable news viewers don’t. Klein brings this up in almost every press release. When he first arrived at CNN and found out they had more viewers, but half the ratings of FNC, his first idea was to get CNN viewers to watch longer. He’s long since given up on that. Now most of his press releases first bash his own viewers for their short attention spans, then pander to them by saying he is trying to make his programming cater even more to people with their short attention spans. Note how at the end he touts his “intelligent people and academia” to explain things to his dummy viewers.
Comment by erljr — August 1, 2006 @ 12:54 am