I read that former ABC News President David Westin took a few swipes at CNN for all its Carnival Cruise coverage. CLICK HERE He lamented “if only Carnival Cruised to Syria.”
Give me a break!
First, ABC News has done some doozies (although I do not consider CNN’s coverage of the cruise as a doozy – it was news) under his reign as President of ABC News and I suspect he does not want us to go back through his time at the helm and see what he green lighted to air.
Second, people wanted to hear what was going on on that cruise ship. It was news. There was legitimate concern for the passengers — a bad storm coming up fast could have created a different story ….or if the fire had somehow reignited it could have catastrophic….or what if a horrible virus swept through the cruise ship as we have seen in the past….or what if the passengers had gotten stir crazy etc. and created havoc etc.? CNN was covering the news as it happened.
Yes, CNN, in its judgment, decided to do more coverage than other media. So? And why does David Westin care? If he didn’t want to watch it, he could turn on hundreds of other networks, online websites etc. to read and watch other news. He could even have picked up a book and read the history of Syria.
With so many platforms available to get news, I can’t figure why anyone – David Westin – would jump CNN for the cruise coverage. It was news. With so many news platforms, you can go some place else if you are not interested! In fact, my guess is that David Westin could have even gone to another Time Warner property like CNNI and watch other stories – including about Syria. (If he wanted to read about the torture and humanitarian crisis in Sudan and/or see my pets’ pictures, he could go to GretaWire.com) Westin’s criticism is a throwback to the old days when there were only 3 outlets for news: ABC, CBS and NBC.
It interesting to me when networks get criticized for doing too much coverage of a topic. The critics often ‘missed the boat’ on the story so their solution is to criticize others for doing it. Go figure…
ON THE RECORD at 10pm has gotten this criticism several times, too. It goes with the territory. I take it as a compliment. It means people are watching. :)
PS – Westin complains about what the media does NOT cover. I wonder if he accepted all the story pitches from his foreign correspondents when he was at ABC or whether he thought the stories pitched too expensive or not something the American viewer wanted to see.
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Update: One other thing….we did cover the Cruise ship on ON THE RECORD at 10pm but not to the extent CNN did.
