Huffington Post Reaction - - CNN in Third Place for First Time

I have just read the Huffington Post blog for the first time. I found its content to be very interesting and relevant to almost every genre of news that is reported. There is a handy side bar that refreshes itself every few seconds with the most up-to-date and frequently-visited Huffington Post blog posts. The whole website is arranged in a very organized and well-structured manner. It is easy to find posts about a wide array of hot issues, as they are laid out logically all throughout the page. There is even an extensive list of links to relevant news sources, columnists, and blogs at the bottom of the page. One blog post from the Huffington Post that I clicked on, I found to be most interesting and relevant to this class.

The Huffington Post reported that CNN has slipped to third place in prime time TV news ratings, for the first time since its establishment almost thirty years ago. CNN is trailing behind Fox News and MSNBC. This slight slip in CNN’s daily views has begun ever since the peak of the 2008 presidential election. Since Fox is very right-wing, conservative news, and MSNBC is obviously extremely liberal, it appears that perhaps the reason behind this recent slip has to do with people preferring very strong opinion-based news reports, rather than middle-of-the road, unbiased accounts of the news.

With the current state of the economy in shambles and a brand new face in the oval office making the nation’s most critical decisions, it seems that viewers are looking to strong viewpoints and opinions from which to base their own positions. Extremely opinionated news reporters, from either the right or left side, are setting the ground for viewers to reach conclusions by following their lead. Perhaps this lends itself to the notion that during the most uncertain and shaky of times, people by nature, form groups and need a leader to help make tough decisions for them—or in this case, make general stances and viewpoints that television viewers can then join.

CNN's ratings are only up 1% from March 2008, while Fox's ratings have jumped 30%, and MSNBC’s ratings have improved 24%. These cable news statistics, however, help CNN in a sense by showing that they really are the straight news with no bias, no bull. It shows that CNN news reports rely on fact, rather than opinion and ideological followings. CNN has always prided itself on being the real news network, and this is basically what these recent statistical findings are solidifying, despite the network’s slight slip in numbers due to the innate instincts of the human mind. When a story surfaces that is big or catastrophic, perhaps that is when CNN’s numbers will soar again, as viewers will turn to them for the most accurate and unbiased account of the news. What do you think?