Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Yanik Ruiz-Ramon Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/US spoke yesterday at the Annenberg School about CNN's role in the media. Klein focused on coverage of the elections and maintaining balanced reports. [Click to enlarge]

Flipping through the news channels looking for Super Tuesday coverage, many Penn students probably stopped at CNN.

Yesterday at the Annenberg Center, President of CNN/U.S. Jonathan Klein spoke as a guest of the Television Criticism writing seminar. The seminar has previously hosted guests such as President of NBC Steve Capus.

Before joining CNN in 2004, Klein was the executive vice president of CBS and also founded and served as the CEO of The FeedRoom Web site. Klein joined CNN at a time when its numbers were falling and it had lost a considerable share of the market to FOX and NBC. He made many changes such as shifting Anderson Cooper's show to primetime, improving the network's digital content and cancelling the show Crossfire, which he felt was "not meaningful."

Throughout the event Klein highlighted the success and appeal of CNN's top two reporters: Cooper and Wolf Blitzer.

Klein also stressed the importance of the 10 p.m. time slot, which he considered to be emblematic of the network. He felt the network needed to revamp its style because "the stoogey, stuck-up reporter of the past is of the past."

Continuing to speak about Cooper, Klein called him FOX News' nightmare, rebutting a statement by FOX's spokesperson which had dubbed Cooper 'the Paris Hilton of TV news.'

Then Klein addressed questions about covering the presidential elections.

With the first election in decades in which none of the front runners for the presidency is an incumbent, Klein feels that there is much more at stake for voters in this election.

He believes MSNBC takes a left-wing stance and FOX takes a right-wing stance, which leaves the vast middle open for CNN. He said that the network is committed to being "aggressively independent brokers of information."

He said that while many networks focus on why certain candidates make certain statements, he believes that journalists and pundits rely primarily on guess work, and they should focus on getting the issues out instead of merely focusing on who wins.

Klein feels that by incorporating questions from YouTube users and giving the public a more direct role, CNN has transformed presidential debates and given more authenticity to the questions. He found that the candidates responded differently to voters as opposed to TV anchors.

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