CNN Press Release - Reporting and Analysis Across All CNN Platforms Beginning Monday Feb. 22

With constituents giving Congress one of its lowest approval ratings ever and politicians throwing in the towel, the issue increasingly uniting the right, left and middle is that the government is not working the way it should.

Beginning Monday, Feb. 22, CNN launches Broken Government, a multi-platform initiative to report in-depth on how the current environment in Washington as well as state capitals and small towns is disappointing and enraging many Americans and what solutions are being proposed to fix it.

As with the Stimulus Report, CNN will air several segments per hour from American Morning through Anderson Cooper 360°, culminating in an hour-long special hosted by Jack Cafferty at 7p.m. Friday, Feb. 26 titled Broken Government: A Cafferty File Special Report.

Throughout the week CNN correspondents and contributors will file in-depth reports from around the country on issues including the debate over government spending, congressional gridlock, outrageous medical expenses, Wall Street bonuses, the disappearing middle class, and the rise of Independents as partisan extremism grows. CNN will bring its contributors and experts together--including TIME magazine correspondents--to offer diverse perspectives and analysis on these issues.

CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is the most trusted source for news and information. Its reach extends to nine cable and satellite television networks; one private place-based network; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; CNN Digital Network, the No. 1 network of news Web sites in the United States; CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service; and strategic international partnerships within both television and the digital media.

I just ran across this great interview Time Magazine did with Jack Cafferty back in September.

Some of the highlights:

On something he shouldn't have said:

"I called Donald Rumsfeld a war criminal the night before the midterm election. The president of the network and the executive producer of the Situation Room and two or three other management gerbils assaulted me en masse, immediately as I got off of the air, saying, 'You can't say that.'"

On Anna Nicole Smith coverage:

That's why I asked [CNN anchor] Wolf Blitzer on the air, Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead? Because we'd done two hours on this peroxide never-was, passing apparently from some kind of drug overdose in some seedy hotel room in Florida. It's like, who cares? Nobody cares.

Read more here.

Fans of Jack Cafferty have started a site GiveCaffertyAShow.com to help get Jack Cafferty his own show, and whether or not CNN has noticed, Jack is getting to host an hour of The Cafferty File in a special later this month during the hour vacated when Paula Zahn left the network. More details on that coming soon... but that brings us to our question:

CNN Observations Poll #9

Should Jack Cafferty have his own show? Yes No Current Results

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Be sure to check out GiveCaffertyAShow.com, and if you're a fan of Jack's, sign the petition. As of this writing the petition is up to 1,420 signatures.

Pre-order your copy here. Below is an summary from the publisher.

"Very little of my backstory qualifies as Hallmark Card material, but it may help you to make sense of the way I see and interpret what's going on around me."
-Jack Cafferty

For the millions who watch the "Cafferty File" on CNN's The Situation Room, Jack Cafferty stands for common sense-the much-needed voice of reason who skewers right-wing nut jobs and liberal eggheads alike. For years, he's voiced the views, hopes, and fears of the average American in inimitable style. Now, in It's Getting Ugly Out There, he brings that level-headed wisdom to bear on the most critical issues facing us today-and explains why Americans must take our country back from those who are harming it.

"It's been a target-rich seven years for someone like me who enjoys pushing people's buttons and sticking pins in things that need pricking, from rich and fatuous celebrities offering foreign policy analysis to the latest lying Beltway blowhard impaling himself on his sword of pomposity. . . . Anyone familiar with my daily 'Cafferty File' segments on CNN's The Situation Room knows I'm not exactly what you'd call the mainstream media's poster boy for feel-good news and commentary. In your face is more like it."

"I'm no shrink, but I have the sense Bush has carried an angry chip on his shoulder much of his pampered life, seething just beneath the good-old-boy surface."

"The bottom line is that our government no longer works for us. The government works for the lobbyists who have had a big hand in influencing (if not helping to draft) legislation favoring not the average American citizen but instead big business: health insurance, pharmaceutical and oil companies, and defense contractors, among others. These are the guys who can make the kinds of political contributions that are needed to finance today's multi-million-dollar political campaigns."

"We want our troops home, but we also want a new army of elected officials to march into Washington and take a fresh, uncorrupted look at the needs of the vast majority of Americans. If these two parties, however 2008 breaks, can't fix what's broken, this way of life as we've known it may vanish into some deep, dark crevasse."

From Tonight's The Situation Room... good for a laugh.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: No. Did you see that? There were two of me on that wall. How is that for frightening? Richard, let me ask you a question. It has to do with security down there. How did Mickey Rooney get anywhere near the queen of England.

QUEST: Now, let's talk about that for a moment.

CAFFERTY: Yeah. Let's do.

QUEST: Well, you see, Mickey Rooney was invited to the queen's garden party at the embassy, which as Wolf will know is a magnificent building. Leutian (ph) Mansion.

CAFFERTY: Answer my question. Is Mickey Rooney the best we could do for a celebrity to meet the queen? I mean, he didn't even know the protocol.

QUEST: You are wrong there, Jack. Once again, you've dug your own hole and you've jumped in it. The queen was delighted to meet Mickey Rooney whom she last met at the premier of "National Velvet" in 1944. Even you might remember that, Mr. Cafferty.

I really like In The Money with Ali Velshi and Christine Romans. Christine is great, a perfect fit for the show. A couple of observations:

- At a commercial break around 2:46 PM CT, they showed the In The Money website, which still had photos of Jack Cafferty, Jennifer Westhoven, and Alan Wastler on it.

- It looks like the New York studio opens up into the New York newsroom. This may be something new, or something that has happened for a while now and I just haven't noticed it. I really like this look.

Watching this show makes me miss CNNfn.

Karen Bryant / Bruce Burkhardt / Chris Burns
Jack Cafferty / Margaret Carlson / Tucker Carlson