THE Cable News Network (CNN) has said it would replace its ‘Breaking News’ banner with a new ‘Developing News’ sign and now only “truly urgent’ events would be described as breaking news.

In a brief statement posted on its website, CNN clarified that “TV networks have been overusing the term ‘breaking news’ for years. So CNN is setting a higher bar for using the ‘breaking’ banner”.

CNN business news anchor Brian Stelter reminded viewers that often when “the banner says breaking news, it’s not”.

The CNN leadership, he said, was now trying to fix that. “Let’s change the banner, change the label, it says developing instead. That’s more accurate,” the anchor said.

A month into his tenure, CNN’s new president Chris Licht also sent a memo to staffers, outlining new guidance for using the term breaking news.

“Something I have heard from people both inside and outside the organisation is complaints we overuse the ‘Breaking News’ banner. I agree,” said the memo, which was also posted on the CNN business news site.

“It has become such a fixture on every channel and network that its impact has become lost on the audience. We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers,” he wrote.

The New York Times reported that CNN was now discouraging “snarky on-screen captions” and its staffers were now “trying to book more conservative voices” at their political shows, ignoring “Twitter backlash from the far right and the far left”.

The newspaper described Mr Licht as a 50-year-old lifelong producer who had never led a large news organisation and reported that some CNN journalists “wonder if he can navigate a sprawling, unwieldy global news network past what has been a no good, very bad year”.

The report said that Mr. Licht was “tearing up” his predecessor’s playbook with a notably different management style.

“I’m not here to get into the weeds of day-to-day editorial decision making,” Mr Licht told employees on his first day.

Published in Dawn,June 10th, 2022