John Stossel’s new show on Fox Business Channel began this week. I was browsing my mother’s new set of hundreds of television channels yesterday and happened to stumble upon a rerun of the first episode. He had Cato’s Jerry Taylor on and they were discussing what should be done about climate change. It struck me as an interesting contrast between the precautionary principle and the postcautionary principle when it comes to risk assessment. Taylor is not against mitigating the effects of climate change, he just says it costs too much to do anything before we know the full impacts.
Also, Stossel’s insistence on being the “common man” is quite annoying, especially since he is so openly opinionated. I don’t think I will watch again.
So the news today is that CNN has been losing viewers as Fox has gained viewers. I believe it is easy to attribute Fox’s increase in viewership to ideological opposition to the White House, but I don’t think this is the reason for CNN’s viewership drop. When you have Ted Turner saying that his brainchild needs “less fluffy news and more international news,” I think there is something wrong.
CNN is on in the cafeteria at my school so I only encounter it for a few minutes every day. Here are two tag-lines that I’ve seen in the last two days that I feel are indicative of CNN’s current state:
