Republican Sen. Tom Cotton called out cable news channels for the always-controversial countdown clock, ubiquitous leading up to any would-be high-stakes news event.
The Washington Post published its annual “spring cleaning” list Thursday and asked Cotton, among others, to suggest something the public would be “better off without.”
Cotton suggested the countdown clock, most often seen on CNN.
“A well-informed public is essential to democratic self-government,” he wrote. “And the countdown clock reflects a frenzied, over-caffeinated news culture that ill serves a vigilant citizenry. It lowers important topics to the realm of entertainment and raises quotidian trivia to the status of ‘breaking news’ — which is often neither breaking nor news. That makes it harder for us to think about what’s going on in the world in a deliberate fashion. It plays into the hands of politicians, who benefit from a distracted public.”
The clock is especially prominent during presidential election years when nearly every press conference, debate and town hall merits a 24-hour ticking notice in advance.
CNN, in particular, is often ridiculed for deploying the clock only to see that once it reaches the event’s start time, another half-hour or more is needed.
