I am at the Paley Center in midtown Manhattan, for their big yearly powwow on the future of global media and entertainment, listening to Katie Couric interview Jeff Bewkes and Les Moonves. Among the other questions, an audience member asked about the low ratings of CNN, compared to Fox and MSNBC. Bewkes’ response, paraphrased: We are not limiting ourselves to the center, we are a wider platform including left and right. Attention on us are due to habits of the press: they focus on primetime. It is important but not the most important thing. We have more people coming to our website; also when we put on news shows people come in for shorter times. We have a different aim, function and economic structure. We get much more revenues and earnings compared to them. Our business is 24 hours around the day, not just morning or evening.
On advocacy journalism and its place in democracy: The idea of objective mainstream news did not exist when our nation was founded. I think our republic will survive now in the age of advocacy journalism. I think let it go, and let the people decide.

I am tweeting from the conference so if you are interested, follow me here.