Chasing the Fox

As CNN winds up its celebration of its 25th anniversary, consider:

For the past three and a half months, CNN has had a crew and reporter at the Michael Jackson trial in Santa Maria, Calif. That’s every day. That doesn’t serve the public interest — on several levels.

Says CNN/US news chief Jon Klein: “We committed to a reporter and crew there every single day. I have not found it to be a very satisfying meal. CNN ought to do stories nobody else has. We did what everybody else did. It was the safe thing to do.”

Why did it take Klein three and a half months to figure that out? Perhaps because he’s trying not to lose ratings points to other cable news channels (meaning, of course, Fox News Channel). Last week’s May ratings numbers brought no comfort to Klein.

According to Nielsen Media Research numbers, more than twice as many viewers were tuning into Fox News Channel as to CNN. On average, in a 24-hour period 1.4 million people tuned into Fox while 610,000 watched CNN.

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