CNN Doesn't Monitor the Battle -- It Tosses Grenades

CNN has a tough job. The cable network offers 24 hours of news and analysis while walking the precarious tightrope of media objectivity. Although the right and left will forever lob charges of bias at CNN, the network nevertheless maintains some middle ground between the likes of 24-hour cable cousins Fox News and MSNBC in the spectrum of media partisanship.

Whether struck by the opportunity for dispassionate analysis or bored by a lull in the political action, when CNN decided to fact check an SNL sketch on the successes of the Obama administration, the other media outlets pounced. Bill O'Reilly slapped the segment with the dubious distinction of "Dumbest Thing of the Week," but it was Jon Stewart who saw the piece as an opportunity to sink his satirical teeth deep into the ethos of CNN.

In an epic segment on Oct. 12, Stewart spent 11 minutes -- half of the entire Daily Show -- pouring through clips of CNN's blatant disregard for fact checking the statistics spewed by actual politicians and pundits on its shows. According to Stewart, "Fact checking is the function of news. This is the public service provided." Never one to make a point without sarcasm, Stewart added, "It is one of the reasons the health care debate has been so fruitful."

As usual, Stewart nails it. He argues that the news organizations should educate the nation with fact checking and an open, intelligent evaluation of each side of political debates so that the public discourse is not mired in lies and partisan bickering. Idealistic as it may sound, there is a word for this: journalism. Instead, CNN brings together partisan experts that bash each other in divisive quarrels masquerading as real information. Issues such as the uninsured and the deficit take a back seat to fiery buzzwords like death panels and socialism/fascism that have no basis in the reality of the health care overhaul. We are constantly bombarded by the explosive attacks of partisan conflict and emerge deaf to the real substance of our political debate.

As an arena for unchecked liberal vs. conservative brouhaha, CNN has emerged as the mouthpiece for what the Atlantic calls "political hit men." These are quick-tempered experts who come to the Situation Room, or any one of the political shows that fill CNN's 24-hour schedule, not to resolve political debates but to perpetuate them with bitter attacks on the other side. The Wolf Blitzers, Anderson Coopers, and John Kings stand by as any middle ground or hope for consensus gets torn to shreds. Quite literally, CNN = Politics.

The effect on the public is a left/right split. If, as the Atlantic article suggests, the "public good is only viewed through a partisan lens," then people will only understand issues based on the "factional priorities" that good news agencies are supposed to fact check. The pundits at CNN take cues from SportsCenter as they infuse otherwise mundane reports with competitive metaphor and hyperbole that heighten the sense of hostility and desperation in government. The effect on the politicians is just as scary. Candidates are forever "taking off the gloves" and "swinging for the fences" in campaigns that begin and end in "crunch time." This competitive atmosphere makes campaigns seem interminable. Politicians constantly feel the need to defend themselves and retaliate against partisan attacks. Politics does not progress during campaigns. It stagnates.

Perhaps CNN and stations of its ilk are only reacting to what we, the consumers of news, want to see. We turn on the TV for stimulus – drama, conflict, tension – and CNN provides it in the context of politics. If ratings surge during campaigns, why shouldn't CNN turn up the burners of hostility on the simmering sausage of health care reform and get people watching? Amid the charged spectacle of our entertainment-media landscape, CNN has few choices. Perpetuating political squabbles isn't personal; it's strictly business.

But politics is not just conflict -- it's resolution, too, and CNN does all of the former at the expense of the latter. The purpose of sound and truthful political discourse -- which the news is supposed to foster -- is to aid in the settlement of legislative and policy battles on some common ground. As a 24-hour network, CNN has literally all the time in the world to flesh out the sides of an argument with analysis and perspective, but instead it revs the nation's political engine to dizzying speeds with a never-ending stream of "recent developments" and "this just in's." If viewers are only fed the heaping portions of diced soundbites and juicy vitriol that CNN's up-to-the-minute ethos provides, then they will not develop a deep understanding of the issues. Death-panel distractions that have no legislative basis will multiply. If the public is artificially polarized and the politicians have to answer the public's phone calls, read its letters, and hear its shouts in town hall meetings, when it comes to representation, they will be forced to abandon the political middle ground that gets bills passed into law.

CNN is certainly not the worst of the news organizations, but it invites criticism because it claims to be an arbiter of sound political discourse, and it is not. Other 24-hour news networks -- FOX and MSNBC, I'm looking at you -- add an overt partisan element that feeds and perpetuates the left/right split that makes politics so divisive these days. The 24-hour network news model is not inherently flawed, but its current form is unacceptable.

The networks need to burn out. They have taken things too fast and too far from actual legislative substance. If all the anchors could take a collective deep breath, step back from the news wire's edge, and return to their desks without the inflamed eye of the instigator, our news would not be the mess of partisan malice that it is today. CNN has pulled an all-nighter every day since its inception in 1980. Maybe it just needs a nap.