DEATH OF A NETWORK – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  It is sad to watch the slow death of a news network, but that is what we are seeing at CNN.  It's a network with many fine reporters, but it cannot get its act together.  A change in management has had no positive effect.

The problem is bias.  Despite all its proclamations, and the attempts by some of its journalists to play it straight, CNN is a liberal network.   Fox is far more balanced.

Consider the recent adventures of CNN:   Gaza, where the network went out of its way to demonstrate its pro-Palestinian bias, agonizing over every Palestinian casualty while showing little interest in the fact that thousands of Israelis were existing, and educating their children, in underground shelters.  We have yet to see CNN read the hateful, Nazi-like, Hamas charter to its viewers, or even the relevant parts of it.   It took brave journalists of European news organizations to break the silence and, when they left Gaza, explain to their viewers and readers what really goes on in the Gaza police state – rockets fired from the parking lots of schools and hospitals, intimidation of journalists, and, now we are finally being told, intimidation of UN personnel.  CNN always seemed behind the story.

Then came Ferguson, with CNN in full liberal tilt.  Obviously, this was a tragedy.  Michael Brown, a black teenager, was killed by police gunfire.  Instead of investigating the circumstances and reporting carefully, CNN went into full Trayvon Martin mold.  (Recall that the first TV picture we saw of Martin was Martin as an 11-year-old, even though he was actually in his late teens.)  Brown, we were told, was a "gentle giant."  After a few days, even CNN had to acknowledge that he was anything but gentle, that in fact he'd allegedly robbed a convenience store only minutes before his death.  It may well turn out that the police officer committed a crime.  But I'd like to see the facts on that, not have his guilt, if any inferred from liberal reporting.

And now we have CNN's obsession with the Ray Rice story.  I have no use for this man.  Any creature who'd punch out a woman is off my "human being" chart.  But CNN's obsession with the story simply reflects, not the tragedy of one woman, but the network's embrace of the feminist agenda.  You watch the lead story on Fox this week, and normally it's been America going to war again.  You click to CNN and it's...Ray Rice.  When you consider the heartbreaking number of children shot in Chicago every week, you wonder where CNN's priorities are.  Oh, by the way, please note that CNN does documentaries, but has not seen fit to do the most obvious documentary of all – a comparison between New York and Chicago, which asks the question, why has one city largely solved its crime problem and the other city has failed?  CNN won't do that documentary for obvious reasons.  It would have to give huge credit to Rudy Giuliani, the visionary Republican mayor of New York, and that's not on CNN's agenda.

Right now CNN is a waste of talent.  I still enjoy watching many of its people.  But the tilt is too obvious, and, after a time, you wonder what part of the story you're getting. 

I don't see a way back for CNN.  The damage, over the years, is too great.

September 12,  2014