Honest and Unbiased Doesn’t Sell

CNN has been falling in the ratings more and more lately.

The reason for this? People already know the news. They see headlines all day (maybe on CNN!), but likely on the web, a newspaper (they still make these?), or on twitter. Either way, they know the news.

But for opinion shows, which CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC all start showing around 7pm – people don’t look for breaking news. They look for opinions. And they want to hear things they agree with. This makes people feel smart, and reassured. So, audiences are fractured. Conservatives go to Fox, and liberals are flocking to the increasingly progressive MSNBC. Some would even argue MSNBC went liberal not based on some ideological choice, but because of a calculated move to copy Fox’s methodology.

Since the beginning of March, CNN has fallen behind both the longtime ratings leader, Fox News Channel, which, as the voice of disaffected conservatives, again has an imposing lead, and the upstart MSNBC, which has tried to mirror Fox’s success by steering to the left. “The people who watch these channels are news junkies,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC. “They’ve already had access to the headlines all day long on the Internet. In prime time you’ve got to stand out and make a splash.”

The problem with this is that there become no actual facts anymore. Everything is subject to interpretation and conjecture. This just leads to more fracture and stalls progress.

CNN is, at least right now, sticking with the middle road. Will there come a time when this is just not profitable enough to justify? What will come to the 24 hour news networks then?