Is my recollection wrong that way back when, during the first Gulf War, CNN was the go-to, accurate news source.....

[FadedMullet]

.......for information about how things were going as the Bush administration sent 600,000 (?) troops over there to liberate Kuwait (and Kuwait's oil) from Saddam? The reporting was thought to be accurate, covering both the slaughter of retreating Iraqi troops by American airpower and the lack of evidence of infants being through out NICU incubators. Remember Wolf Blitzer and the "Scud Studs" reporting from the front as Scud missiles occasionally got lucky and blew up in the vicinity of American and coalition troops.
This is why I have been slow to realize that CNN has become, by any measure, "Fox News Lite", now with 30% less froth.

[hlthe2b]

1. CNN had a lot of very honorable anchors/reporters then--first and foremost the late Bernard Shaw...

A lot has changed at CNN since then and little of it for the good.

[JustAnotherGen]

20. That man is responsible for on of my B.A.s

Mass Comm. We had CNN in our dorm lounge. I knew the difference between Iraq and Iran, Sunni and Shia . . . he educated my generation the same way Cronkite did my parents..

[lapfog_1]

2. It was actually Iraq's oil

that was the issue at hand.

Kuwait was illegally "slant drilling" into an Iraqi oil reservoir which sparked the first Gulf War. And yes, we all got a front row seat to the invasion of Iraq due to CNN.

At the time there was a lot of talk about how we would have a very difficult time facing off against the Republican Guard and their tank traps and fortified border... except of course, we simply went around the border and went through the desert.

This was not the first time the public was lied to to get us into a war ( the slant drilling was never brought up... but there was the story of the Iraqi army invading and taking over a maturity ward and killing the babies, told tearfully by a young lady who "witnessed" this war crime... only it turns out she was the daughter of a Kuwaiti government official.

[FadedMullet]

5. Yes, I remember the young lady as part of a months long campaign to build up support for the invasion. The Kuwaiti....

......royal family took the opportunity to ensconce themselves in London Hotels to avoid the necessity of seeing the war that they financing, for ten cents on the dollar, from too close to anything unpleasant.

[stillcool]

3. I think CNN, under Ted Turner was the first

cable news network. The list of previous anchors and reporters is a serious walk down memory land. I think Bernard Shaw had a big part of the whatever war it was called Gulf War?
https://www.liquisearch.com/list_of_cnn_anchors/former_anchors_and_reporters

[WhiteTara]

4. I don't know about that, but

that was the first war to have its own theme music. I was stunned by that.

[John1956PA]

6. Fred Francis knew his stuff.

The Satellite Dish / Desert Fox / Scud Stud (I forget his real name) not so much.

ON EDIT: I meant to reply to the OP, but I will leave my reply here.

[Boomerproud]

13. Arthur Kent was the stud.

Sorties...Shock and Awe....oh my.

[John1956PA]

16. I think "Shock and Awe" debuted with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

I snipped the following from an analysis piece I found archived on the web:

Shock and awe made its debut in a 1996 publication sponsored by the National Defense University titled Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. Two years later, the Royal United Services Institute in London published a sequel entitled Rapid Dominance: A Force for All Seasons that proposed recommendations for experimenting with and testing the concept along with specific ideas for designing and deploying a shock and awe force including weapons and command and control systems.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1042817.pdf

[Ocelot II]

7. Yes. Reporters like Peter Arnett were right in the middle of it

and did a first-rate job of reporting. Christiane Amanpour was another good one. Even for years after that, CNN was where I turned for information about big events - wars, natural disasters, plane crashes, etc. But ever since the rise of Trump in 2016 they've been slipping, and now they suck almost as bad as Fox.

[ificandream]

9. I don't see Christiane's work much these days, but she's still one of the best journalists out there.

[ificandream]

8. CNN "Fox news lite"? Not really ...

The news business and journalism should never be ruled by public demand. And the best moments of journalism aren't. If memory serves me, the Woodward and Bernstein stories about Nixon did not start to a captive audience. It took time. And if journalists do their job, as some have been, and continue to expose Trump's corruption, it will happen again.

If there's one problem that irks me about journalism today as opposed to when I was in journalism school 50 years ago (yes, that's true), it's a lack of judgment. It seems to me that everything is reported literally note-for-note, which is what allows Trump's stupid crap on Truth Social (what a false name that is) to get repeated endlessly. On the other hand, though, a "president" who relies on name calling because he know it'll get widely distributed by the news media is not a leader, but a child.

And opinion pieces, as much as you disagree with them, aren't journalism in and of themselves (though they can be the subject of news stories, depending ...).

Yeah, I know, it can be hard to discern what's what these days. That's where the real journalists come in.

[Maeve]

10. Gotta agree with how it used to be

Was in Ohio State's J-school back in the 70's (left for a more lucrative line, but had some great teachers and learned to respect what news SHOULD be)

[fujiyamasan]

11. Yep, it's a global phenomenon

I follow next from other countries, and it’s mostly the same. It’s basically the Murdoch model.

Get people emotionally riled up, often find scapegoats. War mongering and jingoism are often a good boost. Being friendly with the government helps (especially if it’s right leaning).

Then use social media to amplify the message. The great thing is at some point no one knows the difference anyways, so if the news doesn’t fit your agenda shot “fake news”. Gotta give Trump credit for that one. A lot of governments love that phrase now.

[rsdsharp]

12. Back then it was the three networks and CNN.

Fox and MSNBC didn’t go on the air until 1996. CNN was the only choice for 24 hour TV news.

[AZProgressive]

14. I was too young to see coverage of the Gulf War

but I do remember for 9/11 and prior to that CNN was a go-to source for reporting without all the bias and editorializing. I think the idea back then was you shouldn't be able to tell if the news anchor is a Republican or a Democrat like Walter Cronkite.

Sometime after Fox News the other networks went downhill. I did watch CNN more than MSNBC during Trump's first term but they seemed more liberal or progressive back then instead of doing this shifting to the right.

[Greybnk48]

15. Iwould come home every day during the week and turn on CNN Headline News and

be totally and accurately caught up on new of the day in a half hour. But that was Ted Turner's CNN, not this mess.

[ITAL]

18. Headline News used to be amazing

In half an hour they'd give you all the big news events of the day...and it ran every half hour. So if you missed the nightly news on one of the Big 3 or CNN, HN would catch you right up.

[KentuckyWoman]

17. A lot changes in 30+ years

I am a lot more grey and a lot more skeptical. News doesn't even try to be news anymore.

Make no mistake about it though, even when I was child and news was print or radio and sometimes news reels at the movies, there was an agenda. They were Japanese "internment" camps, not "concentration" camps. McCarthy was a patriot... at first.

Yes they delivered news, but it has always been slanted to fit a narrative. Sometimes more than others. Now most "news" isn't even attempting to be news. It is opinion with made up "alternative" facts. Pick the craziest stance, push it hard enough, really sell it. Soon the public will believe it just like they believe they need "whole body" deodorant on the back of their knees.

[JustAnotherGen]

19. Bernard Shaw

Was on the tv in my house all the time during my senior year of high school.