21 April 2010

CNN is rubbish


It's been a weird week trying to follow reports of the volcanic ash cloud as I've been travelling through the Balkans. I had the fortune to miss the ash cloud by two days, and now I'm trying to keep abreast of the news in Montenegro where the wifi is a bit dodgy and the hotel offers CNN Europe instead of BBC World. What a load of tripe CNN is, and what terrible journalism it sends around the world.

Its big angle was the fact that one of its producers was stuck somewhere in Eastern Europe and was trying to get back to London. "Desperate Odyssey" was the subtitle as the producer told of having to pay $800 for a taxi from Warsaw to Berlin. While the rest of Europe was squeezing on to coaches and trains with standing room only, or stuck in transit lounge limbo and sleeping on benches, this bloke was actually offered a hire car to drive to Holland. But he didn't fancy driving a Golf with "a really small engine". As someone who has driven a 700cc Chevrolet Spark around Serbia and Croatia and back again, I can't help but be scornful of this delicate flower of a CNN producer. So this "Desperate Odyssey" was merely code for "Feeble excuse for a story". I'm sure plenty of other travellers stuck around the world have more cause for desperation.

And don't even get me started on their annoying news presenters (sorry, anchors) and their dreadful questioning methods of poor hapless experts. And the adverts that they run every four minutes for airlines no one was able to use. Come back BBC World – all is forgiven.

2 comments:

  1. You are MUCH too complimentary about CNN. It is worse than tripe. That CNN reporter who couldn't fly from Warsaw to Berlin could have hopped on a train and done the journey for €40. There was absolutely no need to spend €800 on a taxi.

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  2. I really can't think of a single redeeming feature of the network. In typical American fashion, CNN went into overdrive as soon as the ash cloud headed towards North America. They must have got bored having to spend so much time on a story about Europe and not the US.

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