On this day in 1980, the Cable News Network began, and it is hard to recall the time before cable news, news 24 hours a day, came to be the norm!
CNN, founded by Ted Turner, has undergone a tremendous amount of change, and has been much criticized, but it set the standard for cable news all over America, and was unchallenged, until the emergence of MSNBC and Fox News Channel in 1996.
CNN first became widely popular during the Persian Gulf War; and also gained by its coverage of the O J Simpson Murder Trial; the Bill Clinton Impeachment Trial; the controversial Presidential Election of 2000; the September 11, 2001 attacks of Al Qaeda; the Iraq War; Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans; the election of Barack Obama in 2008; and the Boston Marathon Bombing, among many other historic and, often, tragic events.
As much as there is room for vast improvement in news coverage, CNN has contributed a great deal to public discourse and discussion, informing the American people of what they need to know to be good American citizens, and to understand the world we live in!