Jump to content

CNN

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Gottago (talk | contribs) at 20:14, 3 September 2007 (→Specialized channels). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other uses, see CNN (disambiguation).
Cable News Network
Time Warner Company
TypeCable television network
BrandingCNN
Availability United States,  Canada, worldwide (via CNN International), online (via CNN Pipeline), radio (news reports on the half hour)
HeadquartersUnited States Atlanta, Georgia, United States country =  United States, Template:Country data Cananda
OwnerTurner Broadcasting (Time Warner)
Key people
Reese Schonfeld
Jim Walton (Pres., CNN Worldwide)
Jonathan Klein (Pres., CNN/US)
Launch date
June 1, 1980
Official website
www.cnn.com

Cable News Network, commonly referred to by its acronym CNN, is a major cable television network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner.[1][2] The network is now owned by Time Warner, the news network is a division of the Turner Broadcasting System. CNN introduced the idea of 24-hour television news coverage, celebrating its 25th anniversary on June 1, 2005.

In terms of cumulative (Cume) Nielsen ratings or "unique viewers", CNN rates as America's number one cable news source.[3] While the news network has numerous affiliates, CNN primarily broadcasts from its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta, the Time Warner Center in New York City, and studios in Washington, DC. As of December 2004, the network is available in 88.2 million U.S. households and more than 890,000 American hotel rooms. The U.S version of their broadcast is also shown in Canada. Globally, CNN airs through CNN International and has combined branded networks and services that are available to more than 1.5 billion people in over 212 countries and territories.

Some conservative observers have claimed that CNN has a liberal bias. Critics, such as Accuracy in Media and MRC, have claimed that CNN's reporting contains liberal editorializing within news stories.[4][5]

History

The Cable News Network was launched at 5:00 p.m. EST on June 1 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the first newscast.[6] Since its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to a number of cable and satellite television networks, several web sites, specialized closed-circuit networks (such as CNN Airport Network), and two radio networks. The network has 42 bureaus, more than 900 affiliated local stations, and several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The network's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for the Time Warner conglomerate's eventual acquisition of Turner Broadcasting.

Despite its domestic standing, CNN remains a distant second in international news coverage, reaching just over half of the audience of the older BBC News. Unlike BBC's network of reporters and bureaus, CNN International makes extensive use of affiliated reporters that are local to, and often directly affected by, the events they are reporting. The effect is a more immediate, less detached style of on-the-ground coverage. This has done little to stem criticism, largely from Middle Eastern nations, that CNN International reports news from a pro-American perspective. This is a marked contrast to domestic criticisms that often portray CNN as having a "liberal" or "anti-American" bias.

A companion network, Headline News (originally called CNN2) was launched in 1982 and featured a continuous 24-hour cycle of 30-minute news broadcasts. Headline News broke from its original format in 2006 with the addition of Headline Prime. Current programs feature confrontational personalities like radio talk-show host Glenn Beck and former Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Nancy Grace.

The Gulf War

The first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a watershed event for CNN that catapulted the network past the "big three" American networks for the first time in its history, largely due to an unprecedented, historical scoop: CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate outside Iraq during the initial hours of the American bombing campaign. Clandestine live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett are some of the most nail-biting, suspenseful reports in television news history.

Much of the vivid suspense results, ironically, from the reporters' inability to offer a video feed, which forced CNN to present their degraded, telephone-quality audio over live green-tinted night-vision shots of a Baghdad sky streaked with tracers and explosions. These images evoked Edward R. Murrow's radio reports of the London Blitzkrieg during World War II, resulting in some of the most indelible journalistic images of the late 20th Century. Their impact was widespread and profound.

The Gulf War experience brought CNN some much sought-after legitimacy and made household names of previously obscure (and infamously low-paid) reporters. Many of these reporters now comprise CNN's "old guard." Bernard Shaw became CNN's chief anchor until his retirement in 2001. Others include then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer (now host of The Situation Room and Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer) and international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour's presence in Iraq was caricatured by actress Nora Dunn as the ruthless reporter "Adriana Cruz" in the film Three Kings (1999, dir: David O. Russell). Time Warner later produced a television movie, Live from Baghdad, about the network's coverage of the first Gulf War, which aired on HBO.

The CNN effect

Coverage of the first Gulf War and other crises of the early 1990s (particularly the infamous "Black Hawk Down" Battle of Mogadishu) led officials at the Pentagon to coin the term "the CNN effect" to describe the perceived impact of real time, 24-hour news coverage on the decision-making processes of the American government.

9/11

CNN claims to be the first network to break news of the September 11 attacks. Anchor Carol Lin was on the air to deliver the first public report of the event. She broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. ET and said:

"This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center."

Sean Murtagh, CNN vice-president for finance & administration, was the first network employee on the air in New York.[7]

Experiments

CNN launched two specialty news channels for the American market which would later close amid competitive pressure: CNNSI shut down in 2002, and CNNfn shut down after nine years on the air in December 2004. CNN and Sports Illustrated's partnership continues today online at CNNSI.com. CNNfn's former website now redirects to money.cnn.com, a product of CNN's strategic partnership with Money Magazine.

Online

CNN debuted its news website CNN.com (then known as as CNN Interactive or CNNi) on August 30 1995. Initially an experiment, interest in CNN.com grew steadily over its first decade and today CNN.com is now one of the most popular news websites in the world. The wide-spread growth of blogs, social media and user-generated content has had a profound effect on the network, and blogs in particular have focused CNN's previously scattershot online offerings, most noticeably in the development and launch of CNN Pipeline in late 2005.

CNN Pipeline was the name of a paid subscription service, its corresponding website, and a content delivery client that provided streams of live video from up to four sources (or "pipes"), on-demand access to CNN stories and reports, and optional pop-up "news alerts" to computer users. The installable client was available to users of PCs running Microsoft Windows. There was also a browser-based "web client" that did not require installation. The service was discontinued in July of 2007 and replaced with a very similar but free web based live video service.[8]

The now-defunct topical news-program Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics was the first CNN program to feature a round-up of blogs in 2004. Blog coverage was expanded when Inside Politics was folded into the The Situation Room. In 2006, CNN launched CNN Exchange and CNN iReport, initiatives designed to further introduce and centralize the impact of everything from blogging to citizen journalism within the CNN brand. CNN iReport which features user-submitted photos and video, has achieved considerable traction, with increasingly professional-looking reports filed by amateur journalists, many still in high school or college. The iReport gained more prominence when observers of the Virginia Tech Shootings sent-in first hand photos of what was going during the shootings.

CNN continues to expand its online platform and now offers several RSS feeds and podcasts.


  • CNN has been parodied many times. Many movies outside of the Turner Broadcasting Network also mention CNN in their storylines. In the movie Mr Bones appears a news network with the name "CCN", its logo being in the same font as CNN's. In the video game Desert Strike, CNN is parodied by calling the news station, EANN, with the EA standing for the video game company's name, Electronic Arts. The movie Batman Forever shows a newscast on "GNN" (presumably standing for Gotham News Network) The Logo is very similair to the "CNN" logo. Other parodies, or references include Command and Conquer Zero Hour's American campaign, featuring updates on missions with a correspondent from BNN, the rapper Eminem included a similar alteration in his song Without Me, where, dressed up as Osama Bin Laden he was reported on by ENN, obviously due to his name being Eminem. Some fictional television shows also use a parody of CNN known as ZNN.
    See also: Groland and CNNNN
  • CNN's most famous station ID is a five-second musical jingle with James Earl Jones' simple but classic line, "This is CNN." Jones' voice can still be heard today in updated station IDs. The line has also been referenced in other programming.

Current shows


Former shows

Specialized channels

Personalities

Post Production editing offices in Atlanta.

Present

Past

Bureaux

CNN bureau locations
Note: Boldface indicates that they are CNN's original bureaux, meaning they have been in operation since the network's founding.

United States

The "CNN Center" in Atlanta.

Worldwide

Criticism and controversies

Main article: CNN controversies

CNN has been accused of bias for allegedly promoting both a conservative and a liberal agenda based on previous incidents, although the primary critcism has been that CNN has a liberal bias. It has also been accused of being slanted toward US interests when reporting on world conflicts and wars.[specify][15] Critics such as LA Weekly say it is part of an alleged pro-war news media.[citation needed] CNN denies any bias.

As Fox News Channel continues to receive higher viewership than CNN[16], several prominent former CNN personalities has come to criticise certain aspects of the news network. Aaron Brown has said that CNN has committed "huge mistakes" and frames CNN as an "organisation that is trying to figure out if it can be all things to all people." However, he also praised CNN's journalistic superiority, saying, "[...] CNN's a better journalism organization." [17] Bernard Shaw has expressed that he is "very very disappointed with the way the news management" has handled his favourite network. He criticised the effects of Fox News's "commentary [and] personal analysis" on the news reporting of CNN, saying that "CNN continues to ape many of the on-air mannerisms of the Fox News Network, and I don't like that."[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ Reese Schonfeld Bio. (January 29, 2001) MeAndTed.com. Accessed 2007-06-18.
  2. ^ Charles Bierbauer, CNN senior Washington correspondent, discusses his 19-year career at CNN. (May 8, 2000). CNN.com. Accessed 2007-06-18.
  3. ^ "The State of the News Media 2007 : Audience". Project for Excellence in Journalism. Retrieved 2007-03-11.
  4. ^ http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/A3962_0_2_0_C/
  5. ^ http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/1999/cyb19990217.asp
  6. ^ American Television News: The Media Marketplace and the Public Interest by Steve Michael Barkin, M.E. Sharpe, 2003
  7. ^ CNN.com (September 11, 2001) Available at archive.org. Accessed 2007-06-18.
  8. ^ "CNN live streaming website".
  9. ^ http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnn/default.asp
  10. ^ http://www.turnerinfo.com/newsitem.aspx?P=CNN&CID01=e58c7533-da3d-4c3f-8501-3f034d409622
  11. ^ http://www.turnerinfo.com/newsitem.aspx?P=CNN&CID01=09f454c7-3dd2-41dd-bc5a-de71dca28889
  12. ^ http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/
  13. ^ Rev. Jesse Jackson. (October 2001). RainbowPush.org. Accessed 2007-06-18.
  14. ^ http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnn/paula_zahn_resigns_63672.asp#email
  15. ^ CNN Exposed, cnnEXPOSED.com
  16. ^ Fox News Channel has viewers who view for longer periods of time. CNN has more viewers tune in during a given day
  17. ^ Aaron Brown Talks About... "CNN's Struggle" & The Competition From Fox. TVNEWSER. 6 Jul 2007.
  18. ^ Retired anchor Shaw laments effects of Fox on his beloved CNN. Chicago Sun-Times. 5 Jun 2007.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to CNN.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CNN&oldid=155482673"