Cnn

For 90 minutes Saturday afternoon, there was Sen. Bob Dole talking about making tough decisions, Sen Phil Gramm saying he would never cut deals with Bill Clinton, Patrick J. Buchanan bemoaning free trade, Steve Forbes urging a 17 percent flat tax, and Lamar Alexander telling Dole that time had passed him by and Forbes that his flat tax was a "nutty idea. " This was the Iowa presidential debate, but with the state caucuses still a month away, it was not the stuff to rivet any but the most depraved political junkie.

The showdown in the Persian Gulf took the form of a months-long crisis that many viewers saw played out in detail on television, and especially on CNN, Ted Turner's all-news cable channel. When the fighting started on Jan. 16, CNN scored a coup by having the first news team in Baghdad to report the action live, observing the sudden air strike from their hotel window and describing the scene indelibly as "like being in the middle of hell. " CNN is still riding a wave of ratings popularity based on its war coverage.

How many families do you know who live in a "compound"? My dictionary defines a compound as "an enclosed area used for confining prisoners of war. " But in the liberal media handbook, "compound" means any dwelling where God and guns are present. It's a loaded word used to conjure up images of white separatists and religious sects. City-slicker journalists live in houses and condos. In flyover country, the unwashed masses live on farms and "compounds. " "Compound" has a way of conveniently dehumanizing the people who live in the place being described.

Froma Harrop is a columnist for the Providence Journal The battery in my laptop was dying, and so I turned on CNN for a quick news update. Internet sites give the news in two minutes. But to my shock, CNN gave it not at all. I thought CNN would deliver a world roundup. Instead, it had three dolls chatting about personalities in the news. It was hair-salon talk, except not as honest. The ladies, all attractive in the standardized way, cranked out sympathy for all human subjects.

There's nothing quite like real-life drama to push a station's ratings up, and apparently no one knows that better than the Cable News Network (CNN). The all-news channel said its ratings rise almost 200 percent when the Iran-Contra hearings are on, and that 1.3 million viewers tuned in for the testimony of Fawn Hall alone. Coverage of the hearings resume today at 9:30 a.m. on CNN. WHYY (91/FM) also is providing live coverage starting at the same time. HIGH ON HY It may seem like Hy Lit (Hy-ski to good friends)

A mother generally always wants to know what's going on in her child's life - curiosity and concern, after all, are prerequisites to motherhood. So when Laurin Sydney, who anchors CNN's live, weekday entertainment news show, Showbiz Today, went home to Miami recently to visit her mother, she was surprised that Mom wasn't asking all the appropriate parental-concern questions. That's why the single anchorwoman went on the air recently sporting a faux engagement ring, a gag gift from the Showbiz senior executive producer.

Talk about friendly skies. Ted Turner's Cable News Network is ready to sign with American Airlines to provide daily newscasts for its flights - minus any pictures of plane crashes. The CNN shows begin March 1 on about 1,200 American flights a month. American has been carrying CBS News broadcasts since 1983, but the network's $200,000-a-year contract ends Feb. 28 because it balked at American's demands to edit the newscasts, CBS executive David Berman said yesterday. "We said, unequivocally, no," said Berman, vice president, production and administration, for CBS Broadcast International, the marketing arm of the CBS Broadcast Group.

Burt Reinhardt, 91, an early president of CNN who helped build the global news network in its formative years, died at his home near Atlanta on Tuesday. Mr. Reinhardt had suffered a series of strokes, said his daughter, Cheryl Reinhardt. "Without Burt Reinhardt, it is doubtful that CNN would exist today," said Tom Johnson, who in 1990 succeeded Mr. Reinhardt as the 24-hour network's chief. He joined CNN in 1979 as the network prepared to launch, his daughter said. Turner Broadcasting founder Ted Turner named Mr. Reinhardt president in January 1982.

Robert J. Wussler, 73, a CNN cofounder who became the youngest president of the CBS television network when he took over in 1976 at age 39, died June 5 at his home in Westport, Conn., after a long illness. Mr. Wussler started his 21-year career at CBS in the mail room. He eventually became executive producer of CBS News, overseeing special projects including the 1969 moon landing. In 1978, Mr. Wussler formed a production company, Pyramid Enterprises. It produced syndicated programming for the international marketplace, specializing in Japan, France, and the former Soviet Union.

Bernard Shaw, chief anchorman for most major stories during CNN's 20-year history, told the Associated Press yesterday that he would leave the network early next year to write books and spend more time with his family. Shaw, 60, planned to tell viewers about his decision yesterday at the end of Inside Politics, the daily show he anchors with Judy Woodruff. Along with Larry King and Christiane Amanpour, Shaw is the most visible face on the cable news network. He's been there since the beginning, leaving a job as a reporter for ABC News to join CNN in 1980 when it was just an idea, not a network.

  J AKE TAPPER may be headlining his own CNN show, "The Lead," airing Monday through Friday at 4 p.m., but his news-watching habits began in his family's Queen Village home. His biggest local influences were guys like 6ABC's Jim Gardner and former ABC and CBS 3 reporter/anchor Marc Howard . "I knew who Jim Gardner was long before Peter Jennings ," Tapper told me. "One of the thrills of being at ABC was getting to know Jim Gardner. " Tapper doesn't stay nearly as niche as Gardner's local beat on "The Lead," saying his main goal as a newscaster is to bring front-page news to his viewers.

Only minutes after signing off his new CNN show, The Lead With Jake Tapper , the host is in his Washington office - talking Philly, circa 1987. "When I left, it was before the Blue Route, before the Vine Street corridor," Tapper, 44, is saying. "William Penn's hat was still the tallest thing in the city. " Tapper grew up in Queen Village, in the house where his mother, Anne Tapper, still lives. "That Philly wasn't as fancy as today's Philly is," he says. His parents "split when I was 8. " His father, Ted Tapper, is a retired pediatrician living in Lower Merion; Anne is a retired psychiatric nurse.

In the beginning, when the war in Iraq was still making headlines and CNN was still showing footage of the air strikes in Baghdad, the Chester County Peace Movement could draw crowds as large as 700 to its weekly protests outside the county courthouse in West Chester. These days, the group is lucky if more than a dozen show up. But every Saturday for the last 10 years, they have never missed a protest. And though the war in Iraq is technically over - U.S. troops pulled out in December 2011 - for the members of the peace movement, the protest never really ends.

No surprise that Black in America , Soledad O'Brien's documentary series on African American life and culture, was among CNN's most-watched programs. No other show has offered a deeper look at what it means to be black, in all its complexities. As provocative as the previous four broadcasts were, I dare say that nothing will cut to the core of black identity more than O'Brien's fifth installment, Who is Black in America? , at 8 p.m. Sunday on CNN. If you know Philadelphia, you've got to tune in. The documentary is flush with Philly folks.

CNN has reported that three top Pennsylvania State University officials decided against reporting sex-abuse allegations involving Jerry Sandusky to authorities in 2001 but worried at the time the decision could leave them "vulnerable. " The television network Friday reported on a series of e-mails among former university president Graham B. Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley, and then-vice president Gary Schultz in which they planned to air their concerns directly with the former assistant football coach and then, depending on his reaction, decide whether they should notify outside agencies.

It's the meme of the moment. Remember that famous 1948 shot of President Harry S. Truman holding up the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman"? Journalism gone wrong. Now, thanks to Photoshop and a clever man named Gary He, we have the image of President Obama gleefully holding up an iPad bearing the headline "Mandate Struck Down" from CNN's website. That image, tweeted and posted across the Web, captured much of what happened Thursday, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Affordable Care Act. By 10 a.m., a storm front of anticipation had built around the decision two years in the making.

TRUE BLOOD. 9 p.m. Sunday, HBO.   I'd like TO SAY you can't get "True Blood" from a stone, but as HBO's vampire drama enters its fifth season Sunday, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it is doing.   Silly doesn't even begin to describe most of what goes on in the first few episodes, which include a veiled shout-out to former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, an enormous wink involving the folk standard "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and, as always, an unruly number of subplots.

So, Roland Martin's suspension has some black folks up in arms. Looks like CNN's indefinite canning of its ascot-wearing, progressive pundit has many of his supporters indignant. Some of them have even begun an online petition drive to get him back on the network sooner. While I'm not surprised, that's one petition I won't be signing. But first, a little context: Martin, a prolific user of social media, took to Twitter on Sunday to give his 90,000 followers a play-by-play of his Super Bowl musings, including a commercial critique.

THE ONLY TIME CNN political analyst Roland Martin was mentioned in Tattle, we got a none-too-pleased email from him. Today Martin may be sending out a lot of emails. CNN suspended him yesterday for "offensive" tweets during the Super Bowl that some critics said were anti-gay. As reported by the Associated Press, Martin tweeted about a commercial during the Super Bowl that showed soccer star David Beckham in underwear: "If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham's H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him. " The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said that the remark advocated violence against gays.