CNN was not in the beginning. They were a scrappy news channel that came to prominence with real reporting (most notably in the Iraq war). They got corrupted once it was clear they could not be ignored.
News sources have probably always had bias, but it was never such blatant characature back in the day.
Never mind, I got mixed up, you're talking about just CNN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHKiVkeup2o
CNN has long been a mix of news and opinion, like all news media ever. That’s why media exists: to push facts and interpretations of those facts.
Media is not a charity: William Randolph Hearst and Ted Turner want something for their money: they want to control the narrative.
It has always been blatant: you just haven’t been paying attention. Hearst started a war! He was such a reviled figure that one of the greatest movies ever made was made to dunk on him.
I remember when Clinton tried to attack claimed al Qaeda infrastructure after the embassy bombings and made a speech about bin Laden (the first time I heard the name) they asked if it was to distract from Monica. Compared it to the film Wag the Dog.
Switch to the commercial channels (we thankfully don't have major 24 hour news channels) and the news on there has much more er, Personalities, quirkiness, some silly background news, and a weatherman that travels the country to visit events and petting zoos and shit.
The trick is paying attention long enough to determine if sources stay consistent, issue proper corrections & retractions, are intellectually honest, etc.
Or if the purveyors are just hacking ratings, for more ad revenue.
In the 80s, I eschewed a career in broadcast media. I loved the gear, doing creative stuff, working in the studio. But absolutely hated the business. "If it bleeds, it leads."
We've been complaining about outrage engines since the beginning. Social media just made things much much worse.
Yep, even Fox has some 'real' news a few times a day. Or at least they did until Sheppard Smith quit.
When presented with "well, he also later said 'wear a mask' - which is also a fact"... I would get "fake news" or "he flip flops and therefore can't be trusted". When pointed out they were still 'trusting' the "don't wear a mask" fact... things usually ended there, with some profanity thrown my way.
When more information was presented, it was almost always countered with "that's just your opinion". Or... "I don't trust CNN", etc. At some point a switch flips with many people and "facts" only count when they match your internal belief system.
But even if news LOOKS like they stick to the facts, you should still look at them critically and get your news from multiple sources; they can still influence your opinion simply by omission or by emphasis (random example: put a muslim terrorist attack front and center, put a nazi terrorist attack in a byline or not publish it at all).
The news items themselves can be presented neutrally, but what news to present and how still matters.
Which facts?
Picking and choosing which facts to report is in itself a way of controlling the narrative.
A list of facts is often biassed.
The news channel I like best nowadays is Aljazeera. I like some shows on RT, but it is not really a news channel either.
That means as little flying to flyover states as possible, never leave WDC or Atlanta, certainly dont send Anderson Cooper to Egypt where he could get beat up by government thugs.
Thus its a lot easier to make the news about yourself; reminds me of the ESPN morning SportsCenter from years ago -- when they ran out of sports lowlights the anchors would get caught abusing people on tape.
Are you saying they changed in the last 10 years? CNN has revenues in excess of $1 billion, so they are likely spending millions of dollars a day.
AC used to go to interesting places and do interesting things. After he got beat up they'd have him sit behind a desk and report on WDC politicians acting like children except he had to take them seriously instead of calling out their behavior.
Before Trump came on the scene you would hear them talk about themselves on a slow news Sunday, and the big problem they face was low ratings. You might think they just chased away people with saturation cover of school shootings and plane crashes, but they tried many different things and convinced themselves they were doing the optimal thing.
Probably the owners thought about shutting it down, but the presence of Fox News made that seem really irresponsible.
Trump came and it was great for ratings, like 9/11 every day. That's over now.
There will always be another storm season for Chris Cuomo and AC. :-)
News is a business like any other. They require money, which is equal to clicks in the online world. Hate the game, not the player (unless they are purposefully distorting reality).
Also, we are really stretching the meaning of the word "news" nowadays. Remember this piece? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEahmx0Btw
While i have great respect for Larry King, i have lost nearly all respect for CNN. By the way, the same applies to Fox.
Look at them now. The emotionality of everything is amped up to 11. They reference Twitter constantly. Everything is an existential crisis, and when Trump was in office, everything was his fault. During the 2015 democratic primaries and 2016 election, CNN got the nickname "Clinton News Network" because of how one-sided the coverage was.
There's a reason that trust in news is decaying. Though this is kind of a tangent from the main topic.
That restraint has been lost. Watching young reporters is painful in his much they are tying to get jabs in. Like a dog being rewarded for killing neighbors chickens.
You don't have to be on the left to be critical of Trump. Plenty of right wingers (including Bush Jr) are critical of him. He's made a lot of enemies all over the political spectrum.
To me CNN is basically a right-wing channel, just not as right-wing as FOX.
For real left-wing media, watch Democracy Now! or read The Nation.
And when on CNN Larry King wasn’t part of their news operation. He was a talk show radio host. Larry King Live was Oprah for old men. Larry King is big part of why CNN moved away from 100% news.