Now CNN wants you to stay in hotels that don't actually exist
Leave it to CNN to sing the praises of properties that are still in their blueprints
What can you say about CNN’s fake news factory that hasn’t been said already? A lot, apparently—first, a company that employs a serial bully like Chris Cuomo has got some serious soul-searching to do. The certifiable A-hole, though fired, walked away with millions under his belt while dozens of underlings at Columbus Circle toil for less than peanuts, but somehow this is all forgettable and acceptable. It isn’t. Turn it off!
Ditto for the network’s dumbo travel coverage, which gives the already junked-up Internet bits of uselessness like this wretched new listicle about the 22 (like the new year! isn’t that cute?) best hotels to book in 2022—9 of which either haven’t opened or haven’t been built yet, and 0 of which the piece’s author has actually stayed at. Yikes much? In terms of methodology, normally I’d say that conflating the new with the “best” is simply silly, but because CNN stamps its logo to such dross that qualifies it as fake news. Oh, the brazen duplicitousness of it all!
Memo to CNN: a genuine report/reporter ought to make recommendations for where people should spend their money on the basis of expertise and experience, not glossy PR photos and phantom properties that may sound pretty fly but don’t even exist yet.
If this is how badly CNN can botch a travel story, just imagine the harm it can do to politics (wait—we don’t have to imagine it, we got Joe Biden with honcho Jeff Zucker’s “help” and velvet-glove treatment of the Brothers Cuomo…etc.)
CNN’s post is poster-child for all that is wrong and toxic in travel media right now. Listicles in the era of pandemics and sustainability, while always obnoxious, are no longer relevant. Next: They cite a Six Senses in Ibiza as a sort of necessary balm to restore calm to the “buzzy” island, which is poppycock—anyone who’s actually taken the trouble to go to Ibiza knows that it takes about four minutes by car to find peace and harmony away from the “buzzy” bits. They mention the unfortunately named One&Only Aesthesis (rhymes with prosthesis, not sexy) as “feeling like it’s on its own private island”—really? That’s odd, because if you already know what something feels like even when it’s not opening until “late 2022,” whatever that means, well, isn’t that one crystal ball worth sharing.
CNN, like its mainly Chinese-owned competitor Forbes, does a disservice to American readers in particular with churned-out muck “content” like this. The past two years have been colossally shitty for 99% of the good people of the USA. When it comes time to vacation, if the time ever comes, you simply can’t trust unverified information and that means, by the evidence, you cannot trust CNN. Sooo lazy! But springtime skiing in Crete? Now there’s an actual travel scoop.