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Friday, March 14, 2008
Is CNN’s political team the best on television?
Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper enjoyed an “exclusive” behind-the-scenes look at the new high-tech election studio built by the Atlanta-based network.
Reporter Marc Pitzke said that, every few minutes, CNN hyped its election staff as “the best political team on television” — which recently prompted rival anchor Katie Couric from CBS News [ed: corrected] to promote her crew as “the best political team in the galaxy.” However, according to Pitzke, “CNN’s analysts aren’t much different from their competitors at Fox News and MSNBC.”
He said: “They’re a carefully balanced selection of talking heads, who have found a new, profitable career in this endless election campaign. There’s a liberal, there’s a conservative, there’s an African-American, there’s a Latina. Like sports commentators, they dress up with words what can be plainly seen on the screen anyway.”
According to Pitzke, CNN likes to guard its Election Center like a company secret, but it granted Der Spiegel exclusive behind-the-scenes access for a night following the recent Mississippi primary. The center is a hub where raw data and numbers are stirred into a cocktail of information for millions of viewers worldwide.
“Just before the show starts, the mood is jovial, almost like in a bar. The analysts are joking around; they’re seated at two high plexiglass benches behind each other, like roosting chicken,” Pitzke said. “Soledad O’Brien giggles as she’s being wired and powdered. Hidden behind a wall someone has placed thermos jugs and a half-empty can of soda.”
The “Magic Wall,” also called “Big Board,” is CNN’s most recent attempt to bring classic journalism into the high-tech era — and to lure the Google generation to its programs. John King, who learned his trade as an old-school reporter at the Associated Press, was skeptical at first. “But as I became more familiar with it, I realized that the things it’s capable of are simply remarkable,” he told “Der Spiegel.”
All in all, Pitzke was impressed with a wall that can do almost anything with plain voting results. “It visualizes them as virtual maps, bundles them, explains them, throws them into the future, adds information from Web sites like Google and even displays satellite photos. It can count delegates and superdelegates, add popular votes and project winners and losers,” he gushed.
