1115.org

It just wouldn’t be a new week without another absurd round of verbal diarrhea from CNN president Jon Klein. Previously he regretted his network’s overcoverage of the Michael Jackson trial, next he touted his network’s employees as rollicking, aggressive pursuers of facts, before promising not to run car chases (except when they do), and of course there is always the continuing most important story in the country.

Via TVNewser it seems that there is no end in sight for Klein’s nonsensical quotes (and apparently media outlets eager to enable him.)

“They sound a little nervous,” he said of Fox. “And guess what, they should be. Because we haven’t even started trying yet.”

What is he, channeling John Paul Jones?

Jon, make sure to let us know when you start trying, because it certainly wasn’t on Monday. While Fox News and even MSNBC were covering the rush of decisions handed down by the Supreme Court in what might be their last day with the current lineup, CNN was covering…the BTK serial killer’s courtroom allocution, crime porn for all the fans of Law & Order and CSI:

RADER: First of all, Mr. Otero was strangled, a bag put over his head and strangled. And then I thought he was going down. Then I went over and strangled Mrs. Otero, and I thought she was down. Then I strangled Josephine, thought she was down, and they I went over to Junior and put the bag on his head.

After that, Mrs. Otero woke back up, and you know, she was pretty upset, what’s going on? So I came back and at that point in time I strangled her with a death strangle at that time.

WALLER: With your hands or what?

RADER: No, with a cork, with a rope. And then I think at that point in time, I redid Mr. Otero, put the bag over his head, went over and then — before that, she asked me to save her son, so I actually had taken the bag off, and then I was really upset at that point in time. So basically, Mr. Otero was down. Mrs. Otero was down. I went ahead and took Junior, I put another back over his head and took him to the other bedroom at that time.

This went on for the vast majority of the hour-long segment, only breaking during less lurid moments for some shallow (at best) / misleading (at worst) banter about the Court decisions. Now it’s entirely possible that the powers-that-be at CNN took a look at the ratings book and decided that they were going to go after the inexplicably large audience who enjoys watching simulated autopsies, crime-scene evidence collection and “ripped from the headlines”-style courtroom thrillers. And that’s fine, to a certain extent; it’s not like anything else they’ve been trying (or as Klein put it “not trying yet”) has worked. But Court TV really has a head start in that market, and serial killers aren’t as numerous as most people think. The capture and sentencing of Dennis Rader was news, but his last victim was at least 15 years ago. It’s difficult to justify calling his allocution news, and impossible to credibly hype it as evidence of CNN’s dedication to “hard news” when there are stories breaking that affect every living American.

Klein sounds more like Baghdad Bob or a member of the Bush administration each time he opens his mouth. It might make for interesting news copy, but it isn’t attracting any viewers (or even holding their current audience.) His ego might be satiated when he sees his name in print, but i think Time Warner shareholders are looking for a different kind of satisfaction, and hearing that one of their units hasn’t “started trying yet” isn’t going to cut it.