It is that important national day of 9-11, once again, with all that it entangles. I find myself still in a constant state of mourning for all the families and great loss of that day, 18 years ago today — feeling more like it’s been 18 months. The kind of loss so big that it always leaves a lump in my throat.
But now, on this day, I am also in mourning for something else. I mourn the loss of CNN, too. Yes, you heard me right, grief not grievance.
I remember back in the early 90’s when CNN was a fledgling news channel as it covered the first Iraq war, Dessert Storm. I recall C-130 Hercules transport planes flying non-stop overhead 24 hours a day in a perpetual pattern. I was told that’s what they were.
For the up to date information, you could turn to CNN as a source for news. Wolf Blitzer was on location there somewhere reporting what was going on. It was called the first televised war — even if that was a distortion. CNN was one voice in a vacuum demanding real-time information. We needed to know what was happening in a country finding its war and defensive posture. CNN was there. Maybe reports were not complete or up to the second but it is all we had. In fact, before it started we were well aware of circumstances via media reports. No internet to rely on either.
Contrast that with the menu of cable news we have now, with Internet and social media compliments. It’s almost hard to imagine that CNN was so prominent of a news source then. But those days are gone, and so is CNN as a credible news source.
So today I am mourning that loss as well as 9-11. Back on 9-11, 2001, CNN tried to keep up with a slurry of news. They tried, at least temporarily, to provide unbiased coverage. I have to say, by then, Fox did a better job. Cable went commercial free for days in wall-to-wall coverage. We were mostly a unified nation, even if George Bush was the President. (Not Al Gore)
The bad guys were in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan. A new area we didn’t know that much about. So much to do and say. Before a military response, there were debates in Congress and they lined up supporting force. Only a few outliers.
Well, with all the mourning today, there are a number of things regarding 9-11 that can anger me like almost nothing else. Those are: lack of respecting or accepting the attack for what it was, trivializing the sanctity of the day; drawing unreasonable parallels or equating other acts of violence to it; using that historical event to promote other partisan political agendas; giving short shrift to victims of that day that continue to mount; or depriving those victims of dialogue and justice that still evades them all these years later. Or, basically misusing the memory or sacred observance of the day. (even 18 years after)
But CNN manages to do about all those, on the day it is memorialized in 2019. And they did it as a matter of programming, which reveals planning. I could list endless poof and examples but that is more writing than I care to do now. I shouldn’t have to that is obvious. It is not only CNN but the entire left does the same. It is not nit-picking.
So cable news chose to talk about gun control, the impeachment agenda and normal partisan gotcha politics. There are 364 other days in the year and that is not enough, they have to corrupt this one too, like everything else?
No, they could not even be bothered to respect the memory and events of the day. They must defile the day’s memory and its significant importance. Nothing is sacred.
Congratulations, CNN, because today you earned the “enemy of the people” title anew!
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