CNN Now Offers Free Online Video

Drinian writes "It seems that CNN is now offering its video FREE to the public. Apparently, this is a response to pressure from FOX News who has always offered free video. Is this another nail in the coffin of paid content on the internet?"

Comments

CNN is apparently in the midst of a new plan...

[daveschroeder]

...to win viewers/readers from FOX News. There's a Newsweek piece about it this week.

[CNN president Jonathan] Klein is making revolutionary changes at the cable network--scrapping signature broadcasts like "Crossfire" and "Inside Politics," shaking up his morning-show ensemble and his prime-time producing staff, and creating a new international news show at noon. These are only the first steps in a broad overhaul plan aimed at getting the pioneering and once dominant cable news network out of a seemingly perennial second-place finish, far behind Fox News.

And before anyone complains, you may be interested in at least considering:

http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Med ia.Bias.8.htm

which finds, in part

Our results show a very significant liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABCs World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News Special Report is the most centrist.

and

Based on sentences as the level of observation (the results of which are listed in Table 8), the Drudge Report is the most centrist, Fox News Special Report is second, ABC World News Tonight is third, and CBS Evening is last.

Given that the conventional wisdom is that the Drudge Report and Fox News are conservative news outlets, this ordering might be surprising. Perhaps more surprising is the degree to which the mainstream press is liberal. The results of Table 8 show that the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, and CBS Evening News are not only liberal, they are closer to the average Democrat in Congress (who has a score of 74.1) than they are to the median of the whole House (who has a score of 39.0). [...] the New York Times is twice as far from the center as Fox News Special Report, to gain a balanced perspective, one would need to spend twice as much time watching Special Report as he or she spends reading the New York Times. [...] Our results contrast strongly with the prior expectations of many others. It is easy to find quotes from prominent journalists and academics who claim that there is no systematic bias among media outlets in the U.S. [...] The main conclusion of our paper is that our results simply reject such claims.

Please note:

These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample. (emphasis mine)

It makes me sad when people can't tell the difference between NEWS and OP-ED. Do people also have that same problem with the editorial page of the New York Times? Or just, say, Sean Hannity on FOX News? Is it acceptable to judge the news gathering and reporting capability of the Times by exclusively evaluating the content of its opinion page?

Further, one of the prime measures this report uses is the scoring for members of Congress by Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the self-described "nation's oldest liberal lobbying group".

Now, some might say that comparing news to members of Congress, be they Democrats or Republicans, isn't an effective measure (especially if you believe there is virtually no real difference between today's politicians). But at least take time to consider the report.

Various FOX News "watchdog" groups are a dizzying array of alleged inaccuracies in FOX News opinion and editorial shows, with almost nothing in actual N

Re:CNN is apparently in the midst of a new plan...

[Uruk]

Some people say that the "conservative" party members in European politics would have no chance in American politics, because they would be considered lunatic leftists with a fringe agenda that no American would dare back. In other words, the conservative European politicians are to the left of the American democrats.

That's just the difference between third-way european quasi-socialism and American quasi-capitalism. One of the underlying differences in cultural assumption is that Americans tend to think of the government as primarily something that's there to preserve their personal freedom and economic freedom, while Europeans might feel that the government is primarily something to look out for the welfare of the people. These are goals that are sometimes contradictory, such as when you ask the question, "should health care be open for competition, with maximum options for the patient, or should it be a state-provided service guaranteeing full access to everyone?"

I'm not sure there's a better solution here, but there's no denying the major differences between the two systems.

Re:CNN is apparently in the midst of a new plan...

[pthisis]

And before anyone complains, you may be interested in at least considering:

http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Med ia.Bias.8.htm [ucla.edu]

which finds, in part

Our results show a very significant liberal bias.

Of course, this study has deep methodological problems that have been discussed to death in the statistical reporting community (See, e.g., Measuring Media Bias, Michael Cardwell, George Mason University, March 1, 2005). The consensus seems to be that the studied media outlets trail their consumer's tendencies in this area--that is, consumers do not, in fact, demand objective coverage, but rather demand coverage skewed to match their views, and media outlets tailor their product to consumer demands. And that changes in consumer bias precede (and drive) changes in media bias.

One of the major findings is that the American people are by and large more liberal than the members of Congress (in large part because conservatives tend to vote more than liberals, possibly because of age correlations), so comparisons to members of Congress don't tell you whether the media is skewed relative to the general population--and, in fact, it appears that it is not.

The second upshot is that, since the general population's conservative/liberal leanings are farther to the left than a study of members of Congress would show, it turns out that not only is the media on the whole in line with the public's stance, but that the New York Times is far closer in line with the public's beliefs than is Fox News.

Note that none of this is meant as a vindication of any journalistic integrity or objectivity; on the contrary, it seems to be basically a result of the media outlets following the dollar and trying to present the news as people want to hear it.

Pressure from Fox?

[TPIRman]

I think the OP is correct that other sites' offering of free video likely played somewhat into the decision to go free on CNN.com, but I doubt that was the primary motivation. More compelling is the theory that CNN saw an improving Web ad market and decided that the balance sheet finally worked out in their favor again. (I say "again" because cnn.com video was free once before, way back in the day.) Indeed, a big part of this story is that CNN was able to line up major sponsors for the free-video launch.

As for pressure from Fox, CNN has been losing in the TV ratings for some time, but the people at CNN (I worked there for a while) take great pride in the fact that the website has held its own and remains one of the most-visited news sources on the Internet. Foxnews.com, while definitely drawing a large audience, isn't even close to CNN.com, so the "pressure" on that front would be more of a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses deal for CNN.com than anything else.

MSNBC.com, however, is hardly a slouch when it comes to site traffic, and their free-video service has become very popular. If any significant pressure is being placed on CNN.com in the online space, it's from MSNBC rather than Fox.

CNN

[kevin_conaway]

Now I can see round the clock coverage of the latest missing girl / boy and who won the latest Fox reality TV show. Seriously, how come they don't report NEWS anymore? All their front page head lines are just BS.

Mod parent +5 funny :-)

[tekiegreg]

Is this another nail in the coffin of paid content?

HAH! I subscribe to 3 paid sites. Granted I'm a part-time investor, I find thestreet.com and wsj online to be quite handy. Also consumerreports.org for a small fee keeps me tuned to what is good out there and what is a scam.

Sure I can try and pirate the content out there, but that would require some searching and a guilty feeling for making/saving money at others expense and all these paid sites are very good in and of themselves. So paid content isn't going away any time soon.

Would I pay for CNN though? Something that I can easily find on TV? Probably not, but again by that logic, how many people watch CNN (a PAID cable channel) and still go out and pay the $0.35 for the Los Angeles Times? People will pay for what they perceive as good content, online or wherever.

Re:Your research study is CRAP

[jadavis]

The selection of facts, and the prominence of those facts can indicate bias.

If you keep saying that Abu Ghraib (sp?) and Gitmo are important national issues that should occupy our minds on a daily basis, that's a perspective that I disagree with. They matter, I'm not saying we shouldn't avoid abuses, but I just don't care much about a few non-citizens locked up in a prison someplace. If abuses are happening, correct them (investigate, fire people, whatever) and shut up.

Wouldn't it be bias if some news source only reported horrible crimes by illegal aliens? Every time an illegal alien did something wrong, you could make it a front-page article. I bet you could skew your readers' perspective about immigration policy if you do that for long enough (they might even... *gasp* advocate enforcing the laws that we already have).

Objective is when you look at something without perspective, which is pretty much impossible. People generally consider it to be more objective if a prominent view in favor and a prominent view against are both presented, but often times there are many viewpoints. And also you can sort of set up one side to look stupid by picking a stupid advocate.

To me, the worst kind of bias is when you inject opinion into news in creative ways. Consider the following hypothetical "news" story: "Senator A introduced bill B today. The bill does C, but critics say D, E, F, G, H ...". How many times do you see that pattern to a story? They introduce something they are against, and then to argue against it they say "critics say...". It's pretty obvious to me that they are the critics, and they just want to editorialize on the front page.

Anonymous sources get kind of rediculous also. In 2008, I fully expect to see as a headline somewhere "Candidate X is a poopy-head, sources say.".