Saturday, January 07, 2006
CNN Going for Quality NOT Ratings
There's a great article on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's website on the changes that have happened since Jon Klein came on board in December 2004. In the article both CNN News Group head Jim Walton and CNN/US head Jon Klein stress the main goal isn't ratings but good journalism:"CNN executives are confronting a media landscape that has been utterly changed by the success of Fox, which brought a new flavor to cable news. Conservative talkers, led by Bill O'Reilly, attracted a big and loyal audience. In 2005, "The O'Reilly Factor" was Fox's most-watched show, with an average of nearly 2.5 million viewers, up 3 percent. Fox's overall prime-time viewership stood at about 1.77 million, compared with 853,000 for CNN.
Yet CNN executives said besting Fox in the ratings was not the goal in hiring Klein.
"In the recruiting process, what we talked about was, we weren't going to just chase rating points," said Jim Walton, who runs CNN News Group. "Good journalism is actually good business."
Klein echoed that sentiment and said viewership should gradually improve. "What we're looking for is ratings momentum over time," he said. "More important, it's showing growth in quality. ... Real journalists like to win the quality war."
To achieve that, Klein wants CNN to put on a better-produced collection of shows that consistently tell interesting stories and, therefore, keep viewers longer. The notion is natural for a film buff."
Read the complete article HERE. (registration required)
# posted by ATN @ 11:13 PM 
Kaye: Mine Disaster a Story of Private Pain Made Public
Source: CNN.com CNN correspondent Randi Kaye writes about her experience covering the mine tragedy:"In all my travels for CNN, I had never been to West Virginia. It didn't take long to realize this was not how West Virginia was supposed to look.
Covering this story was a challenge. Not only were we without cell phone service due to the mountainous terrain, but there was also the question of how far we should go to get the story, to be competitive.
This is the type of story that involves so much private pain, but it's our job to bring events which are painful to the public. I had to find the right balance between being a journalist, meeting the demands of my job and respecting the privacy of these families. It's a delicate balance, but one that I found the families appreciated we recognized.
The ultimate test of this tenuous bond came at 2 a.m. Wednesday with the news that would tear this town apart. I was listening to CNN's live programming through my earpiece, waiting to appear on camera, when I heard a woman speak to Anderson Cooper live on the air. MORE
# posted by ATN @ 4:30 AM
Friday, January 06, 2006
NSA: Amanpour, Other CNN Reporters Not Targeted for Surveillance
Source: CNN.com A senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN on Thursday that the National Security Agency did not target CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour or any other CNN journalist for surveillance.NBC raised the question in an interview with The New York Times reporter James Risen, asking him whether he knew anything about possible surveillance of Amanpour by the NSA. Risen, author of a new book, "State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," said he had not heard anything about it.
NBC posted a transcript of the interview on the MSNBC.com Web site Wednesday, then quickly removed the page. In a statement posted on the industry weblog TVNewser, the network said the transcript was "released prematurely," and that reporting would continue.
The interview was not broadcast on any NBC news program, the network said. MORE
# posted by ATN @ 10:34 PM
Well my new year has started off with a bang! I have completed training and certification tests and I am now a full-time Operations Manager at a local outlet of a national retail store chain. For the next 5 months I will be working there 32 hours a week in addition to my teacher's aide job. What does this mean for my blog? At the moment I don't know. I will have a few hours between jobs during the week while doing double duty but I do not know what my schedule will be when summer gets here. I will continue to blog while I can so keep watching for updates!!
# posted by ATN @ 10:28 PM
Blitzer to Anchor Extensive Special Coverage of Alito Hearing
Source: CNN Press Release CNN’s Wolf Blitzer will anchor special editions of The Situation Room to cover the confirmation hearings for the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. CNN’s expanded editions of The Situation Room begins Monday, Jan. 9, at noon, with the opening statements and will continue through subsequent days at 9:30 a.m. with the question and testimony segment of the hearings. All times Eastern.Blitzer will be joined by CNN political analyst Jeff Greenfield and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, along with other CNN correspondents and contributors throughout the week.
CNN Pipeline subscribers can view live streaming gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings, as well as replays of the highlights. In addition, users can watch expert analysis from CNN’s leading correspondents and reactions of leaders inside the Beltway and around the country.
# posted by ATN @ 10:24 PM
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
News Media Caught Up in Erroneous Happy Ending
Source: Reuters U.S. news outlets defended their coverage of the fatal West Virginia mine accident on Wednesday, saying misinformed authorities, not the media, were to blame for erroneously reporting that 12 victims had miraculously survived.
News that all but one of 13 trapped miners had actually perished, which came three hours after the opposite outcome was mistakenly reported, left network anchors and newspaper editors hard-pressed to explain how they all had gotten the story wrong.
Some critics suggested the media were driven by a mix of sloppy journalism, a herd mentality among "celebrity anchors" and the irresistible allure of a happy ending.
But media executives defended their coverage of the disaster, saying their reports were based on multiple, authoritative sources, including West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who turned out to have the wrong information.
"We had it on very good authority from figures who ought to know, the governor and a congressman, that those miners were alive, and we reported it. And as soon as we knew otherwise, we reported that too," Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, told Reuters. MORE
> And more comments from Klein from the same article:
"CNN's Klein and others, however, insisted their reporting was sound.
"We know the answer as to why there was confusion -- because several people from the (mining) company called family members to report the good news before they were supposed to," Klein said.
Independent news analyst Andrew Tyndall said reports of 12 survivors may have been fueled in part by wishful thinking.
"The only reason these sorts of stories get the amount of coverage that they do in the first place is that everyone is rooting for a happy ending," Tyndall said. "People let their optimism for a good headline get in the way of the ... facts."
Klein disagreed.
"CNN reporters believed the facts. We're not looking for endings that are either happy or sad, because we're not in the fiction business." "
News that all but one of 13 trapped miners had actually perished, which came three hours after the opposite outcome was mistakenly reported, left network anchors and newspaper editors hard-pressed to explain how they all had gotten the story wrong.
Some critics suggested the media were driven by a mix of sloppy journalism, a herd mentality among "celebrity anchors" and the irresistible allure of a happy ending.
But media executives defended their coverage of the disaster, saying their reports were based on multiple, authoritative sources, including West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who turned out to have the wrong information.
"We had it on very good authority from figures who ought to know, the governor and a congressman, that those miners were alive, and we reported it. And as soon as we knew otherwise, we reported that too," Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, told Reuters. MORE
> And more comments from Klein from the same article:
"CNN's Klein and others, however, insisted their reporting was sound.
"We know the answer as to why there was confusion -- because several people from the (mining) company called family members to report the good news before they were supposed to," Klein said.
Independent news analyst Andrew Tyndall said reports of 12 survivors may have been fueled in part by wishful thinking.
"The only reason these sorts of stories get the amount of coverage that they do in the first place is that everyone is rooting for a happy ending," Tyndall said. "People let their optimism for a good headline get in the way of the ... facts."
Klein disagreed.
"CNN reporters believed the facts. We're not looking for endings that are either happy or sad, because we're not in the fiction business." "
# posted by ATN @ 10:58 PM
Mining CEO: We regret miscommunication, don't know cause
Source: CNN.com Rescuers found the sole survivor of an explosion that trapped 13 miners in a West Virginia coal mine "by the sounds of moans," mining officials said Thursday, about 12 hours after family members learned the inital report that their loved ones were alive was erroneous.
Without giving a reason for the miscommunication -- and without assigning blame -- mining executive Ben Hatfield said he deeply regrets "allowing the jubilation to go on longer than it should have."
Hatfield and Gene Kitts, senior vice president of International Coal Group, gave several possible reasons for how the false information was circulated.
The rescuers were working under full-face oxygen masks -- through extreme stress and physical exhaustion -- and communicating in code over a possibly spotty connection to the operations base on the surface, Hatfield said.
Any of those conditions, or a combination thereof, could have contributed to the miscommunication, he added.
Joy turned to sorrow in three short hours Wednesday for relatives of the dozen men found dead in the mine.
Just before midnight, miners' families thought the men were alive after 41 hours of entrapment. An ambulance rushed one miner to a hospital in critical condition as church bells rang in celebration.
About 45 minutes later, mining executives learned that there was only one survivor, but that news was not immediately disseminated.
"We were just as suspicious of the second communication as the first. We didn't know what to think," Hatfield said at a one-hour news conference Wednesday. "Rightly or wrongly, we thought it was important to make factual statements to the family."
Just after 3 a.m., Hatfield, the CEO of International Coal Group, announced that 12 of the 13 were dead.
There had been a tragic "miscommunication," Hatfield said.
Hatfield's announcement sent Anna Casto, who lost her cousin, into a tirade.
"No, he strictly told us they was alive," Casto said. "Three hours later, he come back and said they wasn't."
"We want to know why, and how people can get by with this," she said. MORE
Without giving a reason for the miscommunication -- and without assigning blame -- mining executive Ben Hatfield said he deeply regrets "allowing the jubilation to go on longer than it should have."
Hatfield and Gene Kitts, senior vice president of International Coal Group, gave several possible reasons for how the false information was circulated.
The rescuers were working under full-face oxygen masks -- through extreme stress and physical exhaustion -- and communicating in code over a possibly spotty connection to the operations base on the surface, Hatfield said.
Any of those conditions, or a combination thereof, could have contributed to the miscommunication, he added.
Joy turned to sorrow in three short hours Wednesday for relatives of the dozen men found dead in the mine.
Just before midnight, miners' families thought the men were alive after 41 hours of entrapment. An ambulance rushed one miner to a hospital in critical condition as church bells rang in celebration.
About 45 minutes later, mining executives learned that there was only one survivor, but that news was not immediately disseminated.
"We were just as suspicious of the second communication as the first. We didn't know what to think," Hatfield said at a one-hour news conference Wednesday. "Rightly or wrongly, we thought it was important to make factual statements to the family."
Just after 3 a.m., Hatfield, the CEO of International Coal Group, announced that 12 of the 13 were dead.
There had been a tragic "miscommunication," Hatfield said.
Hatfield's announcement sent Anna Casto, who lost her cousin, into a tirade.
"No, he strictly told us they was alive," Casto said. "Three hours later, he come back and said they wasn't."
"We want to know why, and how people can get by with this," she said. MORE
# posted by ATN @ 5:00 PM
CNN Leaves Other Cable News Channels in the Dust in Reporting Mine Tragedy
Seems Anderson Cooper and the other CNN crew had a late night last night as they stayed awake reporting the news of the West Virginia coal mine tragedy. TV Newser stayed up late blogging the turn of events. Let's see, FNC and MSNBC fedll behind twice on Tuesday. Hope this a trend for CNN!
Here are a few e-mails I have received from blog readers:
"This is worth mentioning...i'm very excited that CNN is smashing it's competitors. It's 2:34am eastern and Anderson Cooper's 360 is still live. Fox news went back to prerecorded stuff. MSNBC is live but with nothing worth mentioning. CNN is the only network bringing the Hospital press conference live. CNN Headline News has also simulcast with CNN US. I love it."
"CNN is the first to break the story that there is only one survivor. followed by MSNBC. Fox news is just back on the air at 2:58am. Anderson Cooper's 360 is still live at 3am eastern."
"Dr Sanjay Gupta has also been live from Atlanta since the story broke. He mentioned Rick Sanchez being in the Newsroom..."
"Anderson Cooper 360 has been on the air for 4 hours now since the story of the twelve miners being found alive broke. all 3 networks are still live. it would be interesting to find out if Anderson stays on the air till american morning or if someone is gonna take over for a while. it's not 2am eastern time."
Here are a few e-mails I have received from blog readers:
"This is worth mentioning...i'm very excited that CNN is smashing it's competitors. It's 2:34am eastern and Anderson Cooper's 360 is still live. Fox news went back to prerecorded stuff. MSNBC is live but with nothing worth mentioning. CNN is the only network bringing the Hospital press conference live. CNN Headline News has also simulcast with CNN US. I love it."
"CNN is the first to break the story that there is only one survivor. followed by MSNBC. Fox news is just back on the air at 2:58am. Anderson Cooper's 360 is still live at 3am eastern."
"Dr Sanjay Gupta has also been live from Atlanta since the story broke. He mentioned Rick Sanchez being in the Newsroom..."
"Anderson Cooper 360 has been on the air for 4 hours now since the story of the twelve miners being found alive broke. all 3 networks are still live. it would be interesting to find out if Anderson stays on the air till american morning or if someone is gonna take over for a while. it's not 2am eastern time."
# posted by ATN @ 8:32 AM
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
CNN Leaves Other Cable News Channels in the Dust in Reporting Deal in Abramoff Case
CNN was the first network to report that a plea deal had been reached between prominent lobbyist Jack Abramoff and federal prosecutors. CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux broke the story at 9:18 a.m. (ET), with the news that attorneys for Abramoff were filing papers in federal court with him pleading to guilty to fraud, corruption and tax evasion. In addition, Malveaux reported that Abramoff has been cooperating with the Justice Department for more than a year.
Report Times:
CNN 9:18 a.m. ET
FNC 9:48 a.m. ET
MSNBC 9:49 a.m. ET
Report Times:
CNN 9:18 a.m. ET
FNC 9:48 a.m. ET
MSNBC 9:49 a.m. ET
# posted by ATN @ 4:05 PM
