"Dumb and Dumber" is the headline for Michael Massing's review of CNN, in which, after its recent ratings "shellacking" -- the lowest monthly prime-time ratings in 20 years -- he "decided to tune
in after a long hiatus."
"It’s even worse than I remembered," Massing notes, skewering everything from Piers Morgan ("truly fatuous") to Wolf Blitzer's interview with Bill
Clinton.
"Overall the words that kept coming to mind while I viewed CNN were: conventional, unimaginative, repetitive, and—most damning of all—boring," he writes. "What’s
really striking... though, is how little actual news—how little reporting—there is on it."
Massing suggests that "in light of the vast staff CNN maintains....[it] could begin
really covering the globe. With so much air time and so large a staff, it could even try emulating 60 Minutes, whose mix of reporting, investigation, and (alas) personality profiles remains
the best news show on commercial TV."
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