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Your Opinion Counts At CNN — But Should It?

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-no-no-no-no dept.

theodp writes "Some people love how CNN employs Twitter to engage its audience. Not Steve Dahl. 'I am not interested in the take of @stinky on the Fort Hood shootings or any other current events,' complains Dahl of the access the media gives to Internet know-it-alls. 'I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news, not act as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion.'"

32 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news, not act as a clearinghouse for any bonehead with a computer, a cable modem and a half-baked opinion

    Yeah! That is slashdot's job!!

    1. Re:Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's what I was thinking as I read the blurb.

      If I want solid information I head over to a site like PhysOrg. If I want to see what others are thinking I head to Slashdot.

      News services have become such an opinion mill that it's starting to make it hard to take them seriously. There is a time and place for people to banter on but I don't want it from a news outlet.

      I've seen far too many people around here armed with little more than a high school education think that they have a better understanding of the universe than engineers who are in the field. I know the public opinion on just about anything is 10 times worse. We already have a half a million forums for these people to spout their crap on. Do we really need another?

    2. Re:Yeah! by corbettw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Getting rid of downmods on Slashdot sounds great in theory but it would just result in GNAA posts lingering at 1 (or 2 if the guy doing it has good karma). Which means I'd have to set my threshhold even higher to avoid seeing them, which would bury comments that are actually useful.

      The Slashdot moderation system has its flaws, but it seems to work better than most of the alternatives out there.

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
    3. Re:Yeah! by conspirator57 · · Score: 5, Funny

      but that will take away the righteousness I feel when down-modding things i don't agree with^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H err... when down-modding useless goatse.cx comments. that's it. yeah.

      --
      "If still these truths be held to be
      Self evident."
      -Edna St. Vincent Millay
    4. Re:Yeah! by OakDragon · · Score: 5, Funny
      So browse at 3 or 4.

      Sorry, I took your advice and now I can't see your post.

      --
      Dark Reflection
    5. Re:Yeah! by BrokenHalo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is a time and place for people to banter on but I don't want it from a news outlet.

      I'm with you there. I don't know if this applies across the board, since I have neither the time nor inclination to read all the on-line newspapers (I only buy dead-tree papers when I need something to light a fire with), but I am getting a bit tired of endless screen-space devoted to the inarticulate musings of bored housewives and outraged rednecks. And newspapers aren't the only culprits. New Scientist used to be quite a useful aggregation for scientific journal content, but it's steadily turning into a soap-box.

      In the days of the print media, there was something of a class barrier where contributors were expected to know at least something about a subject before pontificating. This survived for a few years with the on-line versions, but now we are seeing a situation where on slow news days we also seem to be getting lumbered with the above-mentioned kind of rubbish presented in a more fleshed-out form as "real" articles under the masthead of formerly reputable newspapers. The Age is a good example of this. I think the editor changed a while ago, and for all the content is now worth, I often feel I might as well be reading Twitter.

    6. Re:Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've seen far too many people around here armed with little more than a high school education think that they have a better understanding of the universe than engineers who are in the field.

      Yeah! Leave those discussion to those of us who have PhDs in Universal Engineering!

    7. Re:Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Eliminate the weapon, and you make it a choice: either post something insightful, or don't get modded up.

      Eliminate the weapon, and you make it a choice: either mod 500 posts in a 1000-message thread up, or all 500 posters' signals are lost in 500 posts of GNAA noise.

      Because it takes less effort to downmod a post to -1 than it does to post at 0 or +1, Slashdot's actually readable, even at 0 or -1.

      Taking away downmoderation would require work on the part of every legitimate reader. Most legitimate readers aren't willing to work if they have to click/mod to make everything readable (on a large thread, you'd wind up with carpal tunnel syndrome after the first hour), but the trolls are more than willing to put the time in to make everything unreadable.

      If you want a system where only the "blessed" are heard and the moderation system goes out of its way to emphasize the article and de-emphasize the comments (even to the point of requiring Javascript and multiple mouseclicks to read anything, and putting the comments in the wrong chronological order so that only the most recent few are ever visible), there's Gawker. It makes Digg look useful. Me? I come to Slashdot (albeit in classic mode :) to get away from that sort of thing.

  2. Ironic Question by MacroSlopp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This question on a site like this seems incredibly ironic.

  3. Comments by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While I mostly love Slashdot for its comments and the talks between members, it just doesn't work everywhere. If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professionals, not from some mommy who is twittering without understanding any of the issues behind specific things.

    1. Re:Comments by skgrey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professionals

      Yes, but unfortunately that's not what you are getting most of the time. CNN is better than most IMO, but what we tend to see is entertainment, not news. How many times do we see these channels making news rather than reporting the news? I'm so sick of seeing this kind of behavior.

      A great example was on Fox recently where they were asking people on the street what they thought of Sharon Osbourne's comments on Susan Boyle. Most people hadn't heard it, as it happened on an Sirius radio show, but Fox was constantly reporting on it. Then Fox tracked down Susan Boyle at the airport (at the same time as Entertainment Tonight and a few other programs) and asked her how she felt. This isn't reporting the news, this is making the news.

      News organizations should be held to reporting the news, being fair about what they are reporting, and being held to a standard. They are worried about ratings, and unfortunately that affects content.

    2. Re:Comments by Seumas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only thing infusing the news with twitter comments and real time viewer feedback does for me on television is anger me by having the typical mouth-breathing idiot's opinion spewed from their trailer to the rest of the world on a massive broadcast when I'd rather just be getting news. I just want to know what events are right now. I don't need to hear @bootycakes (a real twitter name I saw on CNN once) have their uninformed opinion in 65 characters parroted by Don Lemon over live TV.

      CNN was the last news I bothered to watch on TV and I haven't even really watched that since just after the election. I'm a bit of a news-hound and a political junkie, but too much of this "ireport" and "udecide" and "twitter" and "facebook" and "call in and share your opinion" and "youtube the news" crap has kind of driven me away entirely. I'll just grab the headlines from google news and skip the commentary.

    3. Re:Comments by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Most web commenting is pretty ridiculous amateur-hour nonsense. Its housewives and teens giving us their "wisdom." Web forums have been politicized by partisans. Fringe nutters have turned everything into their own PR outlets.

      Slashdot is slightly better than the youtube/twitter rabble because its a site focused on technology (usually) and has a moderation system. A general news site with any sort of moderation? Madness. I can tolerate slashdot, metafilter, and most of reddit. Everything else is so terrible it makes you realize that crap like "OMG Ghost hunters is the REALZ" or "Vaccines cause autism!!!" is how a lot of people think and critical thinking and a little literacy are the exception, not the norm.

      Dahl is right. While the media needs a check agaisnt bias and poor reporting, I doubt these twitter comments are helping. Looks like they are just lowing the signal to noise ratio even more. I guess anything to help make Wolf Blitzer look smart. I guess Neil Postman has finally been proved right:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

    4. Re:Comments by Chelloveck · · Score: 4, Funny

      Most web commenting is pretty ridiculous amateur-hour nonsense. Its housewives and teens giving us their "wisdom." Web forums have been politicized by partisans. Fringe nutters have turned everything into their own PR outlets.

      What a typical left-wing liberal comment. The government lets people like you post freely to the internet, so how can we trust them to run our healthcare system? I guess that's what you get when you vote a socialist Muslim Kenyan national into the White House.

      --
      Chelloveck
      I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
    5. Re:Comments by MartinSchou · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Go watch The Daily Shows with Jon Stewart. You'd be surprised just how well they actually cover the news in 20 minutes.

    6. Re:Comments by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pretty much. I always thought that the idiocy I saw on gaming forums in the 90s was harmless because it was contained in videogame forums. I mean, things as stupid as platform wars would go away once people would discuss serious things like the federal budget, right? The yahoos going "Nintendo 4eva!" would disappear, right?

      I'm pretty convinced now that I was wrong on that. The political discourse I'm seeing now uses the same terminology and rhetorical constructs as those used in the platform wars. It's all hot air, partisanship and arguing by putting others down. Using twitter comments on the air is worsening the discourse because it merely gives an official outlet to a lot of people who really have no clue, don't know they have no clue, and don't even care they have no clue. But they are now convinced that because they either got on the air or someone they agree with got on the air means that this is the same as Kissinger agreeing with them.

      I'm not saying that Twitter can't be used to send interesting comments. I'm saying, however, that Twitter is used by the media in the worst possible way right now: to further turn news into entertainment of the worst kind: reality TV.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    7. Re:Comments by ZekoMal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except by every means, The Daily Show covers more news than the typical mouth-breathing news casters, and does so in a funny way. They don't lie, make shit up, or spend thirty minutes covering Madonna's booger incident via twitter: they show news footage, give a quick 60 second real news blurb, then make a joke.

      Watch Fox News, the real Fox News and not their commentators, and then watch The Daily Show. Report back with which one gave you more information.

    8. Re:Comments by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If I'm watching CNN from TV, I'm looking for intelligent, fact-checked news and opinions from professionals

      Wow. When you find any, let me know, will you?

    9. Re:Comments by parcel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Except by every means, The Daily Show covers more news than the typical mouth-breathing news casters, and does so in a funny way. They don't lie, make shit up, or spend thirty minutes covering Madonna's booger incident via twitter: they show news footage, give a quick 60 second real news blurb, then make a joke.

      Totally agree. The Daily Show makes news entertaining. Fox makes entertaining news.

    10. Re:Comments by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Insightful? How soon we forget. There's an academic organization that rates the quality of news shows. The Daily Show ranks quite high.

      How do I know about it? This obscure little news aggregation website. You may have heard of it. It's called Slashdot.org.

      http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/2320219

    11. Re:Comments by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >Watch the coverage of any "demonstration" shown on any news show.

      Bullshit. FOX didnt even cover the big gay rights event in DC a couple of weeks ago. I dont know why some people just cant accept FOX as the partisan outlet they are. Incredible.

  4. Who's Steve Dahl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and why should I care...?

    1. Re:Who's Steve Dahl by jdpars · · Score: 5, Funny

      Some idiot with a computer and a cable modem.

  5. No it should not matter. by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I agree. News in America is dead. It turned into entertainment a long time ago. It isn't so much about news anymore as it is about yellow journalism or picking a station that validate one's political views. I stopped watching American news when I discovered BBC news.

    I would say that Edward R Murrow is rolling in his grave, but he was cremated.

  6. The ironing is delicious by greyhueofdoubt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How funny is that: A guy airing his opinion on a public medium about how other people's opinions shouldn't be aired on public media...

    We need a CNN story on this (complete with tweets) to bring things full circle.

    -b

    --
    No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
  7. whoops by metamechanical · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am watching CNN because I expect them to gather the news [...]

    Yeah, that's definitely where you went wrong.

    --
    If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
  8. Re:A simple solution by vondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    CNN, not CNN.com. They put these comments on the air all the time. When they should be, you know, reporting the news. Or better yet, investigating the news.

  9. Re:It's the economy stupid by cluke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To be fair, the BBC are prime offenders at this vox populi crap too. Quite apart from the prime idiocy on display on their "Have Your Say" comments pages, they practically plead for viewers to text or email their views which they then proceed to display and read out live on air. Obivously this is driven by their need for content, any content to fill airtime on their 24-hour news channel, but it is ridiculous that they stoop to parroting some randomly selected half-wit's opinion on complex issues.

  10. Twitter is not the problem by tmk · · Score: 4, Informative

    The real problem: CNN has no real interest in facts anymore. interview the extremists on every side and leave it there.

    Jon Steward has something to say about the problem

  11. Three words by SlashDotDotDot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    N P R

    --
    /...
  12. Opinion by endianx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I find CNN (and other "news" stations) too often use the internet as a way to inject opinions that they don't want to state themselves because it would make them look bias. For example, you read three message from intelligent people who are in favor of government health care, and one from some moron who is opposed. The message is that the majority of people are in favor and the few who aren't are morons. However, the anchors themselves didn't say anything. They were just giving viewer comments. It is a way to inject opinion in to the segments that are officially reserved for news.

  13. Re:Who again, is watching CNN? by plasmacutter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    CNN siding with democrats?

    "I just got back from Washington DC at a huge protest."

    A protest engineered and promoted by an ultra-right propaganda network for half a year.

    "The lone dissenter to these guys is Fox News; funny how 'the fringe' has a typical FOUR TIMES the ratings of this and other, lesser outlets."

    Those ratings are less indicative of the popularity of their viewpoint and more indicative of just how horrible the alternatives are. If I had a choice between a yugo and walking, i'd choose the yugo too!

    please go back to your bunker, the rest of us in the real world want the government to step in to put a long overdue stop to the insurance industry's "death panels". According to the dingbat right, apparently corporations can never, ever do harm!

    --
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