What’s wrong with the following picture?
This screenshot of CNN.com was taken in the early afternoon PST on Friday, January 14th, 2011.
When this screenshot was taken, almost all my favorite news websites (LA Times, Washington Post, New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, BBC News), feature news from Tunisia: the “president for life”, Ben Ali, had quit as a result of mass protests. The only other news site that I frequent that did not mention news from Tunisia was the Detroit News.
I can understand why the Detroit News does not talk about Tunisia: it is a regional newspaper. I go to that website to read automotive news.
CNN.com, on the other hand, had (deliberate use of past tense) a reputation of being a great source of up-to-date news. If you are old enough to remember the first gulf war, CNN was the TV channel to tune into to learn the latest on what was happening on the ground in Kuwait/Iraq. That was how CNN built its brand reputation.
Today, when an authoritarian government is toppled by mass protests, which may result in either a domino effect or more oppression in the Middle-East/North Africa, CNN.com refers to the event in a single line news item hidden among everything else.
Granted that I am looking at the “domestic” edition of CNN.com whereas none of the other news sites differentiate between a “domestic” versus “international” audiences.
However, I think this is unfortunate, for it basically tells me that I can no longer trust CNN to be a good source of news. CNN has lost sight of what made it successful in the first place: delivery of news that matters.