CNN-good journalism?

joe.shearer

November 21, 2007 by joe.shearer

0 votes

There was a piece on pro wrestling and steroids on CNN recently that really made me angry. Basically the piece was your typical "there are a lot of wrestlers on steroids and they're paying for it with their lives" piece you've seen everywhere, but there was one thing in the story that really irked me.

CNN's reporter was speaking with John Cena, who is one of the big stars nowadays. The interviewer asked him if he used steroids, and his response was basically "you can't prove that I did or I didn't," at least according to the story.

Turns out that CNN had edited the footage for his response, and he actually had a long, relatively intelligently-worded response, which began with "absolutely not." He obviously did say the words they showed him saying, but the actual context of what he said was that nowadays with steroids being such a large issue people won't believe you anyway, which forces people into saying "you can't prove if I did or not."

Has anyone else heard about this? I find it horrible journalism and from a news outlet like CNN it's particularly disturbing.

I'm sure some people will not care about this (and the "eh, it's wrestling" crowd might shrug it off), but it seems incredibly yellow journalism to resort to something like that, especially with the sheer mountain of evidence in wrestling, and plenty of ex-wrestlers begging to get on camera to discuss their steroid use.

Forum: Talk

Tags: 

CNN, Journalism, media, steroids, WWE, John Cena, wrestling, Chris Benoit

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1 comment

Ben Neff
Ben Neff, November 21, 2007
0 votes

That is upsetting, but nothing new. I'm sure there are lots of different things about CNN and all the major news stations that would annoy you and many others. I've heard bad things about the way the presidential debates are set up.

Here is a YouTube video that shows the difference in time given to the different candidates.

Here is a NY Times article that discusses Clinton friend James Carville's involvement in the debate.

Here is a continually updated blog entry that criticizes several aspects of the debate.

Some of the above links may have a liberal bias, but lots of what is pointed out are clearly true

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