CNN: when "Breaking News" is a verb.

So after several days in Cairo, me and Ream (who I'm rooming with along with Tom), finally decided to turn on the television in our room after leaving it off all week. Lo and behold, after a few minutes of skipping through channels that featured American shows dubbed in Arabic, we came across good old CNN. Not CNN World, but CNN--the channel broadcast in the US.

Who knows, maybe there will be a report on Viva Palestina. The fact that over 200 people from the US are bringing medical aid to Gaza in defiance of a US-supported blockade seems like something worth investigating by the US' main world news network, right? The fact that we're a diverse group of Muslims, Christians, Jews and others, of old folks and young, of Palestinians and others, including a British Member of Parliament, a New York City Councilman, and former US Representative and that we've come together to bring medicine to Palestine is newsworthy, no? After all, Al Jazeera has covered Viva Palestina, as have Egyptian media; certainly US media should cover a story like this involving Americans, right?

Well, wrong. The top story on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer was the dispute between the Jackson family over the location where Michael Jackson's remains should rest. Both Jermaine and Joe Jackson got plenty of airtime, but not George Galloway, not on CNN. Other main stories included the birthday of a panda in the National Zoo in DC, (she turned four, if you were interested).

Tom and I just checked CNN online. Give them the benefit of the doubt; maybe there just wasn't enough airtime to cover Viva Palestina, but there's an infinite amount of space on CNN's Website. Well, it's not there either. There is, however, a story entitled "Wedding ring lost at toll booth" and, of course, "Psychics see magic in Michael Jackson's life." Tom and I are cracking up laughing throughout the writing of this post. "I feel embarrassed for them," Tom said as he walked away, shaking his head.

I guess the comic relief that CNN provides is nice as we think about how we're about to approach one of the most wrecked places on Earth--something that I don't know if any of us are prepared for. But then, the sober reminders for why I came to the Middle East are precisely what makes the "journalism" that CNN features (and I haven't even mentioned the outright lies that are promoted on an hourly basis via that media outlet) so criminal. But then, isn't the profound ignorance that Americans have regarding Palestine (which CNN manufactures) precisely what allows for unabated US-supported brutality in Palestine?

CNN is ridiculous to the point of being laughable, until one remembers how deadly the consequences of it's actions are.