You weren’t the only one to cringe when CNN anchor Don Lemon engaged in some wild on-air speculation earlier this year about the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. So did Lemon’s boss.
New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported that CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker thought Lemon’s suggestion that the jetliner might have been swallowed up by a black hole was, well, idiotic.
When there is a news event that captures the public imagination, it will dominate CNN and preempt the prime-time shows. Zucker calls it “swarming and owning the big breaking-news stories.” The strategy was most vividly on display during CNN’s breathless—and seemingly endless — coverage of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, lowlighted by anchor Don Lemon speculating on camera that the missing plane might have flown into a black hole. (Zucker was frustrated by the gaffe: “Don, don’t be an idiot.”)
Lemon took CNN’s breathless coverage of the missing plane to outrageous extremes, once devoting airtime to a discussion of nearly every conspiracy theory associated with the disappearance.
He even wondered if the mystery was the result of a “supernatural” event, a suggestion he may well have taken from a random Twitter user.
So…Instead of mindlessness he’s suggesting hive mind direction by a single bloated queen? OK.
Catastrophic on board event (fire/smoke), pilot aims for nearest airport that can take plane, pulls busses to find short (disables transponder), plane and passengers overtaken with smoke, plane flies for hours until fuel expended, then plunges into deep and vast Indian Ocean. Search continues, may take years, especially considering depth and size of ocean. Pretty simple.
Yet all the nuts were out with their “Diego Garcia” nonsense, or that the plane would be used in an attack, etc. And CNN and the rest of the media were glad to give them a stage, but in this case CNN seemed to be by far the worst. I think they kept it as the lead story thinking it would be found quick. Then when they realized it would not be, they had to “milk” the story. That requires letting the conspiracy madness fly…and that they did.
Yes, but was it good for ratings?
Why didn’t he fire the looser?
A statement that could be broadly applied to almost everything he reports on these days…
What’s truly cringeworthy is that some of his remarks make Wolf Blitzer look rational and smart.