Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Reason to Hate CNN International #1: It's Everywhere and Unavoidable

I'm kind of a junkie for news and current events. Considering I've lived overseas in non-English speaking countries for roughly five of the past ten years, this hasn't always been an easy hobby to keep up with. My thirst for international English language news while living abroad has often forced me under the oppressive thumb of the hegemon, CNN International. After years of suffering under this abomination of a news channel I've decided to use this space to fight back by listing all the reasons I can think of to hate CNN International.

For reasons I'll elaborate on in future posts, it truly is a terrible, terrible news source to be forced to depend on. But if English is your most comfortable language, you're living or traveling outside of the English speaking world, and you're the kind of person who can't go five minutes without wondering if there's been a coup d'état, cyclone, or terrorist attack somewhere, there is simply no way to avoid it. If you're a college student living abroad for the first time and CNN International is being pumped into your bedroom while the lurid details of the president's affair with his intern are being broadcast to the world, are you going to change the channel to watch somebody babble incomprehensibly in Swedish? If you're living in a small African village relying almost exclusively on a shortwave radio and the BBC World Service to tell you what's happening in the world and your employer puts you up for a few days in a hotel with a TV and only one English channel, would you have the willpower to avert your attention?

Well, me neither. And when I finally broke down last week and got a satellite TV connection in my house, it was entirely predictable that I'd be drawn back to my old nemesis. Did Obama pick up any more superdelegates? Is the Burmese junta going to allow foreigners to deliver aid to the cyclone victims? What's happening in the NBA playoffs? Only one way to find out...

5 comments:

The Board said...

I definitely agree that CNN Intl. sucks. Having spent too many nights to count in European and Japanese hotels where that is the only English language option, I feel your pain. However, the only thing worse that CNN Intl. has got to be the CNN we're stuck with in the US. At least Fox News is entertaining . . .

eric said...

Yeah, but you're not really stuck with CNN in the US. You have a million other options from other TV channels to newspapers to blogs. That's why Reason #1 is that its unavoidable.

Anonymous said...

But neither of you guys said what is so terrible about CNN.
and, will it report on the dust storm?

Jesse said...

No idea if she's still on, but Finnoula Sweeney was my favorite CNNi news reader.

Yes, I had my favorites.

Anonymous said...

I have passed something?