Top Stories?

So I might be totally wrong here, but I have always thought of CNN to be a legitimate news source. One of the few that could be counted upon to deliver at least for the most part reliable stories. Important articles on what is taking place throughout our nation, with our government, and the rest of the world are the usual topics one would expect to see from a source such as this.

It is for this reason that today I was quite surprised when I visited their page providing up to date "breaking news", the main story of Anna Nicole Smith, which has been everywhere and not too surprising, was not the most unimportant and shocking. To the left of the major headlines is CNN's "Top Stories" column. Here are a few examples of what I saw: "Girl can stack and unstack 12 cups in 5.3 seconds", "Bobby Brown get out of jail card will cost $19,000", "Eatery's burger calories equal 5 of Mickey D's". These were just a few examples. I wouldn't of been surprised to find these stories under Most Popular on the next tab over, but not in Top Stories. You would think with everything going on in Iraq, Africa, our government and all around the world, there would be something that should be considered breaking news over how many seconds it takes a girl to stack cups.

I guess this goes back to the question of what is news and who sets the media agenda? I know that people want to hear about things that are somewhat entertaining, but as John Stewart stated on the Crossfire episode viewed in class, there is a place for news to be made fun of and for entertainment stories such as these to be discussed. It is the responsibility of our "legitimate" news sources to report to us what is really important, what is really breaking news. I think that this is a prime example of this type of situation. Of a so called legitimate news source leaning too far towards entertainment.

http://www.cnn.com/