CNN has many problems. Its daytime anchors, with the exception of Ali Velshi, can be unbearable to watch. If it weren’t for some “Jews run the media” comments, the network would still have Rick Sanchez on the air for two hours a day, a miserable prospect.

But CNN does have very good weekend shows and hosts, with the aforementioned Velshi (Your Money), Howard Kurtz (Reliable Sources) and the inimitable Fareed Zakaria (GPS). CNN also employs a range of pundits and commentators from liberal and conservative political stripes. Most importantly, CNN airs actual original reporting in its prime time hours with Anderson Cooper and formerly with Brown.

CNN by no means fulfills its resource potential nor is the gold standard in reporting. But compared with its cable news competitors, it does offer a brand unmatched – namely that it actually reports the news, whereas FOX and MSNBC are primarily concerned with commenting on the news.

CNN’s poor ratings reflect two facts about American news consumers:

1) Viewers are much more interested in punditry and commentary than actual news reporting. Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann provide the verbal fireworks that entertain. And lest we forget that television news is all about entertainment, we only need refer to the ratings reports to remind ourselves.

As I have written here previously, I believe we live in a hyper-politicized culture. And as such, the average American news viewer is more interested in confirming their own bias and beliefs than actually learning something new and analyzing stories from an objective view point. They want to hear only what they want to hear. Cable news pundits serve these viewers.

2) The reason FOX, and its overloaded schedule of pundits, is consistently Number 1 in the ratings is because this country fundamentally leans right. As Vonnegut aptly observed, “Dictatorships to the right are much closer to American ideals than dictatorships to the left.”

First stop: Paris.

That’s where we find newspaper Le Monde, arguably the New York Times of France, filing suit against French president Nicolas Sarkozy for the unlawful use of government intelligence services to identify a reporter’s source. The reporter, Gerard Davet, had been covering an influence-peddling scandal involving the ruling center-right party. While the intelligence services have acknowledged investigating the matter, Sarkozy has denied that the Elysee Palace, or president’s office, ordered the snooping.

France enacted a shield law earlier this year giving protection to a reporter and his/her sources, similar to the kinds of confidentiality protections regarding lawyers and their clients, and doctors and their patients.

Though the First Amendment protects free speech to a degree not seen in Europe, the U.S. does not have a shield law while one is written into the European Convention on Human Rights charter. There are exceptions to the rule, however, particularly when it comes to national security. But a Dutch court did recently issue a ruling protecting reporters’ sources.

Whether a shield law will ever come to pass in the U.S. is anyone’s guess. I suspect that with the fragmented nature of who constitutes “media” in today’s world, one is not likely to come soon enough.

Onto Iran, where we find the crackdown on journalists ramping up. Last week, a dissident reporter was jailed for the Orwellian crime of “propaganda against the state.” This comes days before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came out as a 9/11 Truther in front of the United Nations.

In Afghanistan, international coalition forces have arrested 2 local journalists – one a staffer for Al-Jazeera, the other a freelancer for the AP – describing them as Taliban facilitators. The journalists are suspected of supporting the Taliban’s propaganda network.

This is a tricky case. Both foreign and local journalists have had contact with and even met with Taliban leaders in their professional reporting capacities. It is not enough for American and international forces to assert these allegations without substantiating them. It is also imperative that coalition forces disrupt the Taliban propaganda machine. I suspect, in the end, that these journalists will be released, but not before much time has passed.

Continuing East, we land in Pakistan, where we find a journalist speaking out about his kidnapping and torture at the hands of government intelligence and security forces. The reporter, Umar Cheema, has written several articles in recent months criticizing the military.

Our last stop on this month’s tour brings us to Mexico, where a newspaper in Ciudad Juarez has issued a tragic plea to the drug cartels amid the metastasizing violence and death. You can read more of my thoughts on this matter in a post from last week.

Thank you for joining me this month. Come back at the end of October for another installment of Around the World: Press Freedom in the News.

Until then, support your local journalists.

“Overtime” will produce original content adapted from the weekly broadcast series. Viewers will be taken behind the scenes and shown how stories are produced. According to a press release, viewers can expect to find content that was cut from the broadcast presentation, such as back stories, as well as correspondent perspectives on crafting the segments.

One of the reasons the public distrusts the media is because they do not understand how the news is produced. They lack an understanding of the reporting methods journalists use to develop stories. It is paramount then that the press do a better job of educating the public in this regard and engage in broader transparency initiatives as exampled by “Overtime.”

For more information, go here.

It began with Sarah Palin, gained steam this year with Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle and Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, and now has been adopted by Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, who says she will not give interviews to anyone from the “national” press because doing so won’t help her get votes.

Dodging the press, pandering to the base, characterizing all criticism as the work of a biased media and acting without accountability is the new strategy for conservative candidates, especially those with less than mainstream views – i.e. Angle wanting to scrap Social Security, Paul turning his nose up at civil rights legislation, and now O’Donnell with her witchcraft dabbling and anti-masturbation campaign.

The truth of the matter is that none of these candidates can stand the heat. So instead of opening up to the public and answering the tough questions, TeaBaggers would rather stonewall and avoid any discussion of their actual beliefs and positions.

Even an appearance on Fox News, a bastion of conservative spin, was too much for O’Donnell to handle.

Of course, Gingrich seems oblivious to the fact that America already has such a law on the books – known commonly as the U.S. Constitution.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Gingrich, ever the political opportunist, only made such a proposition in order to stir up the fears many conservatives have of Islam. Doing so helps Gingrich further his “Obama-as-the-other” agenda, particularly among the 20 percent of Americans who actually believe the president is a secret Muslim.

That said, ultra-conservatives are fond of anointing themselves defenders of the Constitution, and I have little doubt that most have never actually read it.

“What do you want from us?” a front-page editorial addressed to the gangs read in El Diario today. ”Explain what it is that we should publish, or not publish, so we know what to expect.”

Two of the newspaper’s reporters have been murdered  in the last two years for reporting on the city’s drug activities, which other newspapers have avoided doing in fear.

The editorial also pointed fingers at the government, accusing Mexican authorities of negligence in investigating the crimes and murders of the drug gangs.

Speaking to the gangs, the editorial said, “You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city.”

Thousands of people have been murdered in Juarez over the last few years.

It now seems the last group trying to hold the cartels accountable has bowed out of the war. I can understand why, but it is no less tragic.

Sarah Shourd was one of three Americans arrested and imprisoned in 2009 for an alleged illegal crossing into Iran while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. Shourd’s medical condition seems to have compelled her release, though Iranian authorities have said that it was a humanitarian gesture.

The two other Americans, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, remain incarcerated in Iran under specious accusations that they are spies.

We have seen this game played before by the theocrats ruling Iran.

Iranian authorities are so paranoid and prone to conspiracy theorizing that all foreigners are marked as likely spies and agents of the CIA. This tendency has become more common since disputed elections in June 2009 resulted in national protests and internal dissension, which has been met with crackdowns on the media, mass arrests of citizens and false accusations against foreigners.

And the so-called humanitarian gesture related to Shourd’s release is as disingenuous as it gets. Iranian leaders are using these Americans as pawns in a political chess match. It is obvious that they are trumping up false charges against these Americans in order to later free them in a desperate attempt to generate goodwill. But any fool can see the scheme their orchestrating. And any fool can see that they are violating human rights laws in the process.

This is a classic case of national security concerns vs. First Amendment rights – a conflict that has grown in relevance and prevalence since 9/11.

1) Jones, a previously unknown evangelist from Florida, has pulled off perhaps the single greatest publicity stunt in the modern history of the 24/7 news cycle. He orchestrated the publicity campaign perfectly by designing a completely outrageous, even Nazi-esque event to be held on a national day of tribute to fallen heroes, and did so by never turning down an interview and upping the rhetoric with each television appearance.

2) The media happily played the goat. They took Jones’ bait hook, line and sinker. And not for a moment did they stop to think that they might be giving Jones exactly what he wanted. The media just loves to be the patsy.

3) The response in the “Muslim World,” similar to the Dutch cartoons hullabaloo, is disproportionate to the offense in question. We are already seeing violent protests and death result even though Jones has apparently called off the event.

Let’s focus in further on truth number 2.

As “Burn a Quran Day” gained greater and greater notoriety, concerns arose about the fallout the event would have in the “Muslim World” and its potential ramifications for the safety of our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The President of the United States, the Secretary of State and General David Petraeus all weighed in on the matter. And, of course, their involvement created even more buzz.

But it is simply below the status and pay-grade of these civilian and military representatives to be commenting on the exploits of a radical preacher man from the Gainesville swamps. Obama, Clinton and Petraeus should not have interjected themselves into this folly. It only lent credibility to a man of few credentials.

Now to the media’s participation.

It is no secret that the press loves conflict and the fringe characters who usually dominate it. These kinds of stories quickly become feeding frenzies, and competing news outlets battle one another for coverage, trying to outdo each other by giving more and more time to reporting the firestorm. Before Jones it was the not-at-”Ground Zero” Mosque.

In the case of Pastor Jones, the media elevated a man of no renown and no importance to a position of international prominence. They made Jones the kind of villain that demands attention and public retribution. It wasn’t simply enough to call Jones what he is (a moron) and move on.

So when it came time for all the talking heads to disavow Jones’ plans, it was obvious that their outrage was false and disingenuous. For had the media not devoted so much coverage to Jones, all those perceived threats to our troops in combat would never have been. And all that offense associated with burning the Quran (for the record, burning any book is offensive) would never have been.

It’s called discretion. And the media is charged with a great responsibility in exercising it. And in Jones they failed to do so, for in Jones they found the kind of character that can distract us all from the truly important issues of the day.

Of course, in some sense the news media is a reflection of the society and culture it speaks to. It may only be a snapshot, but like reality television the media does provide a very real glimpse of our past, present and future – triumphs, failures and all. The public, therefore, shares fault in the politicization of our lives: people crave, the media serves, the people consume, the media serves more. The two need each other.

So why is this? Why is our culture so polarized and fragmented that scoring political points is often more important than finding compromise? Why must every positive and every negative be accessed political responsibility?

We have politicized faith.

We have politicized art, music and movies.

We have politicized Mother Nature.

We have politicized natural disasters.

We have politicized education.

We have politicized history.

We have politicized crime.

We have politicized sport.

We have politicized science.

We have politicized 9/11.

When will we begin to politicize love? How about compassion?

I recognize that there are instances when crime or art or sport (etc.) are necessarily cast in a political light. There are very good reasons for political rock anthems. They have purpose. And it is beyond question that political interests motivate our lives in profound ways. We, therefore, cannot shy away from the duties and responsibilities thrust upon us by the experiment in self-governance known as democracy.

It is true too, however, that we have a penchant for rushing to judgment and not questioning our own prejudices with the same level of scrutiny we direct at political opposites. And these normative behaviors lead us to politicize that which should remain above the fray.

However fine the line is between the political and apolitical, we must vigilantly seek to identify that mark and refuse to step over it in a petty political game of one-upmanship. We must cut a wide, protective swath where our human emotions, instincts, struggles and joys can find solace from the trappings of jungle politics lest we all become creatures of opportunism and finger-pointing.

What’s the best example of politicization you have seen? What consequences do you think it engenders?