Popularity Contest

Forget the children starving in Africa or child prostitution in third world countries. Apparently, that is not what today’s viewers search for when updating themselves with the “Most popular” news on CNN’s website videos. There are much more important matters on their minds. For instance, “Who’s Miley Cyrus’ new man?” I don’t know what’s more sad; the fact that today’s audience would much rather watch that than something of actual relevance or that fact that CNN actually thought the 15 year old pop star’s love life was worthy of space on their website. I can understand this on channels like KTLA 5 or FOX 11 that have been more on the soft news side for years, but to see this come from a well-respected network like CNN, is shocking.



Competition is fierce between news networks and as a result, the pressure heavily influences which stories the networks choose to feature. Nowadays, the line between entertainment news and hard news is blurring. However, CNN has been a reliable source of hard news for years. So why change now? The people at CNN must ask themselves, “Are we willing to risk ridicule and lose loyal viewers in exchange for incorporating mindless fluff onto our website and network?”