Google engineer Greg Coppola recently spilled the beans on the inner workings of the tech giant’s search and news business to let us know, among other things, that Google’s preferred news source was the staunchly anti-Trump CNN.
Coppola made this point to emphasize the human bias behind the decisions that are too often conveniently blamed on “neutral” algorithms.
With that context in place – let’s now look at another tech giant in love with its algorithms – and, apparently, with CNN – and it’s Facebook.
CNN now has a new show, financed by Facebook, and it will focus on key liberal issues that include things like climate change, race and identity, immigration and economic inequality.
CNN’s brand new content is available on the Facebook Watch video service, and according to reports, CNN aims to mimic the free-style of YouTube creators and those putting out Instagram stories.
To be frank – this sounds phony. It’s as if someone – CNN in this case – was trying to hijack a successful native online format that is known to appeal to a younger and/or more web-savvy audience. And CNN’s goal here would simply be to find another channel to spread their crusty, old, highly biased and highly scripted content.
Why this and why now? We can only speculate, but for CNN, the king of the painfully scripted and produced news genre, to suddenly go for for the “vlogging style” – could simply mean casting its net wide ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections.
But will the “cool kids” of YouTube and Instagram suddenly take a media dinosaur-like CNN into their fold just because it is now teaming up with Facebook – a platform they barely pay attention tom outside Instagram itself – and trying to mimic their favorite formats?
Only time will tell. But we have to say, both CNN and Facebook look super desperate in this collaboration. And that may not resonate particularly well with the “vlogging” crowd.
