CNN's Sam Feist discusses media's role

The next session I attended was for just about everybody, I believe, and hundreds of people were in the ballroom. CNN's Sam Feist talked for over an hour about his strategies for getting people to watch his programming and how important it is to love what you're covering. Feist is the manager of the program "The Situation Room" and gained the audience's respect when he began name dropping. "I've known Wolf [Blitzer] for 15 years and I still don't know his political orientation," he said at one point while stressing the importance of leaving personal political beliefs at the door. He said sporting bumper stickers or campaign buttons are grounds for being terminated at his company. That's because trust and objectivity are "the most important thing" in journalism, and he said those should at no time be compromised.

He gave as a contrast to being accountable the example of how Barack Obama's education was erroneously reported to have been strictly Muslim. He talked in detail about how CNN got a reporter on the story immediately and broke the news that the claims were completely convoluted, alluding the incompetence of his competitors.

The thing I'll take from Feist's presentation, I believe, is that the press is the "only real check" on the government and that doing your job well in this industry can have a real impact on the world, as has been continually demonstrated.

Jim Mustian