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CNN's peep show journalism with White House state dinner party crashers
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CNN did a story on Wednesday evening about a couple who crashed the White House State dinner. Aside from the fact that the story itself didn't deserve more than two or three minutes but was milked by CNN for more than 15 minutes on Anderson Cooper, CNN reached new lows in visual journalism with a package they pioneered which I have previously called "peep show" journalism.
I gave it that name after watching CNN do story after story where they run the same 10 or 15 seconds of visual footage over and over and over again like the kind of 8MM porn loops that used to be shown in 42nd street peep shows in the 1950's and 60's.
Last night CNN, in doing the story about the party crashers, ran the same 10 seconds of footage of the couple entering the White House and walking by the press, close to 20 times, just like the old peep shows. And that is exactly what it was.
The couple, for those who care, were part of a cable reality series, "The Real Housewives of Washington" and they managed to get past a checkpoint and enter the grounds. But they never made it to the tent where the dinner was being held. But as CNN gave us the story and then went on and on about security and metal detectors, we were given the same 10 seconds of innocuous footage of the smiling couple mugging for the press cameras as they made their entrance. It went on for the full 15 minutes. A shorter version took up 10 minutes on Cambell Brown.
This visual peep show journalism is a product of the producer, director and news director at CNN. Its an embarrassment and they've been doing it a long time but last night they hit new lows.
The technique says that people behind the scenes at CNN are not only tasteless they are painfully stupid when it comes to pictures and journalism and show no respect for the intelligence of people who watch CNN. And no respect for themselves either.
The first time I saw CNN use this peep show technique was during the Monica Lewinsky frenzy. The day Lewinsky arrived to testify in front of the grand jury the cameras were there. CNN ran the same shot of Monica Lewinsky getting out of an SUV 15 consecutive times. The same shot -- Monica opening the SUV door, her legs swinging out, and sliding off the seat. They ran that shot 15 times while the reporter did his story. I say 15 times but that is not accurate. I actually stopped counting after 15 times.
The fact that no one, no journalist, no producer, no control room director, no one ever said "are you crazy doing this"? says a lot about whats happened to integrity in journalism and the quality of the journalists and executives at CNN.
CNN should be embarrassed. But what is even worse, and why there wont be any changes anytime soon is, they aren't.
If you can stand to watch this insanity ( which will include the same repeated shots of Facebook pages) be my guest. Video from Cambell Brown is below. Give them some time to get warmed up. But when they do, they really get going. By the time the story got to Anderson Cooper later in the evening it got a lot worse but keep watching. This is bad enough.
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