In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman makes no secret of his contempt for television. It is easy to draw a parallel between that and Jon Stewart's disdain for CNN, which he expressed freely during appearances on Crossfire and Larry King Live. Similar to how Postman felt about television, Stewart felt about CNN: each man felt that that form of media (???? Figure out the right word choice here) was causing more harm to society than it was serving the public good.
When Ted Turner founded CNN in 1980, he did so in order to occupy a niche that was not being filled by television programmers. He recognized that there were four distinct types of programming-movies, sports, regular programming, and news-and that news was the only one that didn't yet have a dedicated 24-hour presence. As a businessman, his goal was to capture that underserved piece of the market. Turner did not launch CNN out of an altruistic desire to help the American people be better informed of what was going on in the world; rather, he did so, first and foremost, in the pursuit of profits. CNN has since expanded its programming offerings outside of 24-hour breaking news coverage to include debate shows such as Crossfire; however, the network's reputation is
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By this, he means that, at its core, the purpose of television in general is to entertain, rather than to inform. He continues, "No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure." (87). This quote is a perfect explanation of why shows like Crossfire exist: rather than depicting calm, measured, well-reasoned intellectual debate, the show features hot-headed panelists with opposing views, who are basically guaranteed to get riled up and begin screaming at each other or at their guests. Such a format, while less productive, makes for far more entertaining