Failed expectations

Perhaps my timing is simply way off. Maybe it is just my bad luck. But everytime I tune in to CNN these days, it seems it never has anything to show anymore other than the coming US elections. Worse, it seems the only thing it can show about the US elections is everything derogatory to Donald Trump. Trump is not my father. America is not my home. So I don't care how relentlessly CNN bashes the Republican nominee. But doesn't it have something else on its menu?

As one of CNN's millions of worldwide viewers, I would have preferred greater variety in its news programming. There are, after all, so many things happening in the world other than just the US elections that I would have expected to see on CNN. And I would have expected CNN to rise above its own self and treat Trump with a little more even-handed professionalism than the unbridled bias it is in fact unleashing on Trump everyday.

CNN repeatedly claims to be the global news leader. It is a claim that I think has fallen flat on its face. You cannot be the global news leader if you give in to an inordinate desire to show only the US elections almost to the complete exclusion of everything else. You cannot be the global news leader if you cannot accept the fact that you owe it to your global news audience to act professionally and objectively enough to give even a person like Trump at least a fair shake.

CNN will naturally deny my views, but I am sure there are millions like me out there who have similarly detected this determined bid to put down Trump at every opportunity. It appears to me that CNN consciously goes out of its way to find a negative way to portray Trump. I do not know why. But who cares? All I care is that I get a wider variety of news because the US election is now seeping out of my ears. And the unyielding Trump-bashing has already become nauseating.

There was a time when CNN had the credibility to withstand and survive the few disappointments that are normal in any massive global news operation. But instead of taking steps to ensure the continued and sustained integrity of its credibility, CNN went in the other direction. I cannot validate what I only observe each time I tune in, but it seems I now see less and less of the more serious, objective, credible and truly professional anchors.

In their stead I now see more and more anchors who just cannot seem to help themselves when it comes to issues close to their own hearts. And when it comes to panel discussions, they just cannot seem to find and discover newer resource persons to lend fresher and newer perspectives to their favorite topics, which is nothing else but the US elections.

So jaded and predictable have CNN's unchanging battery of resource persons become that even if the anchors just sit them and not ask them to say anything, the global audience can speculate what they are going to say and never get accused of putting words into their mouths. Show a face onscreen and it can readily be told which way the screw turns in his or her brain.

The sad thing about it is that CNN has become so reflective of America and its ills that it has become the microcosm of that larger ailing society. The CNN bias against Trump is not even subtle but leaps out like the unflattering reflection in the mirror that shows an America disintegrating, the values that once made it so great, admirable and respectable now conspiring toward its own self-destruction.

There is no more democracy in America. Trump submitted himself to a process which, when it went in his favor, everyone, including his own party, now wants to reject and undermine. His speeches may be outrageous but democracy not only allows him that, it is in fact required to defend to the death his right to say them. Alas, while America allows, and CNN takes kindly, other outrageous acts by and among other men, Trump is considered a special case and against whom democracy does not apply.