A little girl from a small town in Bihar who migrated from India to the US when she was just six years old, Rena Golden is today at the very top rung of the hierarchy at global news major CNN International. As senior vice president, she visited India this week to announce the latest edition of "Eye on India", focussed this time on the youth power of the country.
Credited by her colleagues with amazing skills, journalistic and managerial, driving the world's largest news broadcasting company CNN from just an all-American channel ("I joined 21 years ago when people used to call CNN Chicken Noodle News!"), to an international one reaching 2 billion viewers across 200 countries, she still retains a disarming level of simplicity.
It is perhaps natural that an American of Indian origin would also be the head of CNN's Diversity Committee, ensuring that community parity is maintained not just within the organisation but also in the dissemination of news.
Golden, who studied in two universities in North Carolina, graduating in English with Honours ("My father wanted me to be a doctor, but I wanted to study English") and started working with CNN from 1985, spoke to Indiantelevision.com's Sujit Chakraborty on the present status and future plans of CNN.
Excerpts:
You have a large hand in shaping the strategic direction of CNN. What is the most significant area you are looking into at the moment? CNN's news website is a tremendous success which attracts a billion users every year. And CNN International has just launched its news service on mobile phone. We are also looking at video on demand and IPTV… we want to be platform agnostic. |
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How is IPTV doing in America… there is content available on that platform here in India as well, but the problem is we do not have downloading technology or bandwidth? |
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That is my second question, in fact. You also deal with the technology of news gathering? When we went to North Korea, we could move in easily and cover news in a much easier manner, which is often cheaper. |
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What are the latest innovations and what are the next technological frontiers in news gathering and dissemination? |
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CNN has more than once made public its ambitions to go regional and local. But at least in the context of the Indian subcontinent it has not happened. And now with the explosion in television news in the country, it looks like it never will. I can see your CNNj in Japan, then Turkish and Korean CNN, so why not in India? I think there are different models for different markets and the model that we have for the Indian market… Wow! I mean we couldn't have imagined this. There could be a partnership with some Hindi channel… I am not ruling that out, but what we need is as strong a partner as we have in CNN-IBN. We do not have anything to announce here (in terms of a regional channel) so far. We believe in having local partners and we would not do that in India and open a Hindi channel for instance, without a strong local partner. Local partners understand the country much better… So what you see, this partnership with CNN-IBN, is one of our proudest achievements. |
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Chris Cramer had told us last year that BBC has a certain Mark Tully factor advantage in India. For the first time though, now both CNN and BBC can be said to running neck-and-neck. It's been a long while coming but don't you think it has come too late in the day because of the way Indian news channels have captured virtually all the mind space? |
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I think also right from the days when we were ruled by the British there was some association, so what do you feel you are looking at here to change that? But where CNN excels is in breaking news… that's our DNA, the DNA of CNN-IBN. We also don't have a British style of presentation, a British view of the world. We have journalists from 50 different nationalities covering news for us. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for BBC, but I think CNN has very successfully differentiated itself. |
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Unlike a few years ago, when even a major train accident here would not be covered on BBC or CNN, there is a lot of India on these channels now. But I also feel that there are documentaries that need to be made on India. What are the kinds of documentaries you think CNN ought to do on India in the near future? Do you have a kind of road map for that? But having said that, the important thing to remember is that we are not a documentary organisation, not a documentary channel. Our first and foremost work is 24-hour news. We believe in context, not only what's happened but why it has happened. |
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Everyone knows now India is changing, especially in the economic and knowledge sectors. What are the specific areas of change that excite you the most and why? In the US, Indians are doing a lot of things. There are Indians heading technology companies, there are a couple of Indian filmmakers in Hollywood, and of course there are those in medicine and engineering. But one area where Indians are not there in the US is politics, which I think is important for us. The other thing, which is the topic of this edition of Eye on India, is the Indian youth. There is no other country in the world where 50 per cent of the population in under the age of 25. |
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Looking at the global picture, is there a region-wise break-up of how it all reports back to Atlanta? How does it work? |
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And speaking of regions, can you offer how revenues stack up in percentage terms? |
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A lot has changed in the last 5-7 years. A global news perspective is not solely in the hands of the likes of the CNN and BBC anymore. The impact of Al Jazeera has been well documented. Now the French have also launched their own global news channel. How is CNN changing to meet the challenges of a world view that is no more ruled from a western Anglo-Saxon perspective? Let me put this clearly. CNN International is American owned, and we are proud of our American ownership, but CNN International is not America-centric. It would be crazy for us to be broadcasting internationally but from an American perspective. From the business point of view, that would be ridiculous. But I think competition always makes us stronger, because competition means we have to be always ahead. We welcome competition. We have been there for 25 years and there is vast acceptance, because CNN's journalism is top notch. And we feel there is enough room for others as well. |
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And we have been talking about ethics and so forth, so what are the checks and balances that are in place to make sure that stories are fair and accurate? First of all, we have the standard-practice guidebook, which, of course, all news organisations have, which all CNN journalists have to abide by. Obviously, the journalist reporting knows the story best, but that story is vetted by many people. Along the way there are many different people who touch that story and fact-check it before it actually goes on air. We are much more interested in getting a story right than getting it 'first'. We are the Breaking News leader, but we would not be that if our objectivity failed. |
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Yes, but say you hire me from India and I, for that matter no one, can be totally objective… maybe I am slightly with the BJP or the Congress or whatever, so a tinge of bias creeps in. So how do you correct that? At the desk level? There have been occasions when a story has been held back for a week to make sure that all the players have got the chance to comment. I can't tell you how much CNN lives and dies by its credibility factor. |
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We'll pick up on a touchy issue, with American media in particular - "embedded" journalism. Isn't the way the whole Iraq story has developed a severe indictment on the way the media reported on it from the very beginning? What's the point of the truth coming out now, when all that is left is death and destruction? Well, I think the media had not been as critical as it should have been in the early days (of the Iraq war). Not only the media, there are many politicians and different segments of American society that regrets not having been more critical (at the outset). I think that a lot has changed. |
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Because and after the massive Iraq fiasco? |
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Veering off from your day job, as it were, you are on the advisory board of the Atlanta Woman magazine. Tell us something about the magazine and your area of interest in this. |
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As the head of the CNN committee on diversity, what are the crucial diversity issues you face and how do you resolve them? |
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Sure, but the question is, how do you resolve that? We also hold functions where I may not be there but my managers are there. Transparency is the most important thing. |
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You are in charge of talent scouting too. What do you think of the talent pool in India in your line of work and how do you plan tapping that pool? There are people who differ with me and say, 'No, an anchor is very different from a reporter. They have to look good, have a good voice, look polished all the time… and it's the reporter who has to be out there and do the story. No. I can't afford to do that in CNN International. Our anchors are the ones who are on the field as much as possible. Because to my mind, there is no difference between an anchor and a reporter. In the case of Lebanon issue last year, for example, I had three or four anchors going from Atlanta reporting alongside CNN reporters. |