Provincial, Narrow-Minded Beltway Media Slams CNN Over Cruise Ship Coverage

Provincial, Narrow-Minded Beltway Media Slams CNN Over Cruise Ship Coverage

Full disclosure, sometime yesterday afternoon I fired off a Tweet — that I have since publicly retracted — criticizing CNN for its seemingly non-stop coverage of the disabled Carnival cruise ship being towed into port. So, granted, for a time there, I was as provincial and narrow-minded as the rest of the DC media.

I, however, snapped out of it; but as of right now, CNN is still getting slammed for going its own way yesterday. Everyone from Jon Stewart to BuzzFeed to Slate to the Huffington Post to the New York Times took a whack, and the mockery is likely to last through the Sunday show navel-gazing.

Isn’t it interesting, though, that as soon as CNN stops covering what everyone else is covering, the network is held up for immediate derision and criticism? Isn’t it interesting that the very first day CNN chooses to jump off the Narrative Plantation, the blowback hits with speed and fury?

Either the provincial, closed-minded, self-obsessed DC media simply can’t fathom the idea that actual news occurs outside of their provincial, closed-minded, self-obsessed DC world; or they just don’t like the idea that they might have a runner on their hands.

For years now, CNN has joined the rest of the cable news media in churning out politics 24/7. And it has done so in the way dictated by our left-wing Narrative Overseers at (among others) the New York Times and Politico. Naturally, this has been of great benefit to Democrats, especially Barack Obama.

But *gasp* should CNN go its own way and start to report on news that occurs outside a few square miles in DC and New York, The Minions might actually snap out of that 24/7 Oh-oh-oh-Obama trance and have their eyes opened to a wider world!

Can’t have that.

Choice is a good thing. If people wanted the breathless tick-tockery of yesterday’s Senate vote blocking the inept Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as Defense Secretary, it could be found at the other cable nets, Twitter, and online. CNN, however, thought that maybe, just maybe, there were people out there interested in other news.

What a concept! What a business plan. Offering people choice!

As I wrote earlier this week, the moves Jeff Zucker — the newly-installed CNN chief — has made thus far are mostly for the good. And while it’s fine to argue that obsessing over a slow-moving cruise ship felt like that remake of “Speed 2” no one asked for, overnight things have already improved. CNN is still covering the after-effects of the cruise debacle, but also the meteor shower in Russia, Dorner, the incoming asteroid, and, yes, what’s going on in DC.

If you’re not a provincial, narrow-minded, self-obsessed DC media type, you have to appreciate the thinking behind this decision. Something different is almost always something good. And as a partisan, the fewer hours the mainstream media spends carrying Obama’s water, the better it is for America.

 

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC               

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