TIME?s James Poniewozik offers CNN some unsolicited advice for boosting its ratings: Embrace its status as a mainstream institution with expertise:
The answer for CNN is not to abdicate its authority but to use it more aggressively. Today, with technology making raw news a commodity, the challenge for consumers is sorting out politicized counterclaims on everything from health care to meteorology to security. Viewers want someone to cut through the kicked-up partisan dust. They want to hear, flat out, when someone is full of it. CNN too often gives both sides, then shrugs. A CNN anchor interviewing two party hacks and leaving us to decide who we should believe doesn’t cut it.
Here?s the problem with Poniewozik’s prescription: CNN already has chosen sides in the left-versus-right debate. Rather than feign either objectivity or institutional authority, the network might want to follow Poniewozik?s lead in admitting its left-of-center bias. Then CNN could duke it out with MSNBC for the audience that wants that spin. Of course, that’s basically what’s happening now.
