On CNN

I don't watch CNN nearly as often as I used to, preferring to get my news from the internet-- from credible online sources, that is. Recently, I spent a few minutes on separate occasions watching various CNN programs. I kept getting the feeling that something was obstructing the actual stories themselves that the particular CNN shows purported to tell, but I could not quite put my finger on it. And then, when I was back to the net for catching up on news, I found the answer. It was the CNN anchors and media personalities who stood in the way of the stories.

As I think back on each time I have watched a CNN star present a story on any issue-- genocide, the war on terror, Iraq, violence in Mexico-- it is clear that the real protagonist of the story is always CNN itself. The real hero of the story is CNN, the subtext of the story is CNN. It is always about the heroism of Anderson Cooper, the very incarnation of a well-dressed depth of conscience walking with grave visage through dangerous territories, or about the brilliance of Sanjay Gupta, often found spelling out elementary medical observations for viewers, or about the breathless political urgency of Christiane Amanpour, again, offering the most rudimentary sociological observations about the 'Muslim world' and the like.

In each of these cases, the quality of being telegenic stands in for profundity and moral authority. Pierre Bourdieu's brilliant critique, On Television, explains the larger forces which produce the very selective vision of television, a selective vision that nonetheless does not recognize itself as limited. Now, that would be a great topic for CNN to cover-- how cable news came to speak for the world and about the world.