CNN Lineup 'Quite Mystifying': Professor

Robert Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, at Syracuse University, says that he finds CNN's new lineup "really quite mystifying." For one thing, "I've seen Eliot Spitzer on TV a lot, and if someone were to say, 'Name ten thousand people that you think might be O.K. on television,' Eliot Spitzer's name would not be on that list." He says he would like to see an 8 P.M. show that followed the lead of Jon Stewart and, to some extent, Keith Olbermann and CNN's own Anderson Cooper: watching the competition and, on a daily basis, examining, in a reportorial mode, " 'O.K., what did Glenn Beck claim about colonial history, and is that really true?' That's something that CNN could really sink their teeth into, and it's in the spirit of the identity they've tried to keep in spite of the fact that they think they can't keep it."

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