Altering News Norms--the Influence Of Cnn (2)

By Author: Arsenalo
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In its first decade, CNN established the importance of the function it served. CNN was the only network on "live" on January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. For hours in 1987, audiences followed CNN's coverage of efforts to rescue Baby Jessica, the young Texas girl who had fallen into a well. That programming drew the highest rating CNN had received up to that time.

In summer 1989, CNN's coverage of Tiananmen Square riveted audience attention on the ongoing struggle of the Omega Speedmaster Replica Watches Chinese students to democratize their country. In May 1989, those watching CNN's coverage of Tiananmen Square heard anchor Bernard Shaw confirm the extent to which live coverage had affected world affairs:

I am being told that the Chinese government has closed the city of Beijing and no journalists are being allowed. Unbelievably, we all came here to cover a summit, and we walked into a revolution. Now we are being told that if we don't stop transmitting, the Chinese government will take our equipment. ...
... It will be interesting to see what happens. President Bush is being quoted by reporters covering him in Maine, and it's being relayed to us. He is saying, "Word of the news blackout is very disturbing."
By 1990, we routinely expected to see "CNN LIVE" imprinted on newspaper photos of breaking news.

As noted earlier, CNN's World Report has modified the ideology underlying news as well. In the 2Vi-minute segments aired unedited from around the globe, we see the play of competing ideologies at work. The differences were evident in news stories following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. From the Palestinians came stories claiming that the U.N. sanctions against Iraq created a double standard; they pointed out that when U.N. resolutions had condemned Israeli actions, U.N. sanctions had been effectively blocked by a U.S. veto in the Security Council. Small countries dependent on Arab oil focused their stories primarily on Replica Omega Watches the economic impact of the embargo; some declared they were being used as pawns in a U.S. game. One story from the Philippines emphasized the economic hardship imposed on that country by the inability of its nationals working in Kuwait to continue sending payments to their families at home. Only on CNN could audiences around the world hear the 76-minute speech that Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein sent to the United States to be broadcast to the public.