Eyerunny
Insipid? I imagine that's how it has to be for those expected to relay information without rigging it.
Insipid, yes. And
moreso all the time. It's the 24-hour format, which CNN spearheaded back when cable news was a new idea and the other stations have capitalized on. The soundbite is king.
This is a problem with all tv news, I'm not singling CNN out there. The "news cycle" basically consists of passing around three or four major stories for about fifteen minutes each over and over again every day. Most of the actual information-gathering is left to "correspondents," who may or may not be experts in a relevant field. The anchors are basically there just to look pretty and read the prompter, some of them so poorly inflected that it's obvious they've never even seen the words before. (I'm looking at you, Brooke Baldwin.)
It'd all be a lot easier to swallow if the format allowed for more personal initiative.