cnn | Southern Fried Science

CNN is airing “Blackfish” Thursday at 9. Watch with us and join the live twitter chat!

Posted on October 23, 2013 by David Shiffman

On Thursday, October 24th at 9:00 P.M. eastern time, CNN will be airing Blackfish, the critically-acclaimed documentary about orca whale captivity and SeaWorld. Be sure to check out Southern Fried Science’s review (and fact-check) of the film.

Blackfish will be followed by a live debate at 11:00 hosted by Anderson Cooper. The debate will feature Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Dr. Naomi Rose of the Animal Welfare Institute, Jack Hanna (yes, that Jack Hanna) and an aquarium representative. SeaWorld declined to participate.

I’ll be watching the film and the debate, and I’ll be tweeting my thoughts and reactions in real time and live-blogging for CNN . Several marine mammal experts and other scientists will also be participating in the twitter discussion. To participate in this live discussion, simply:

1) Watch the documentary live (DVR “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Parks and Recreation,” watch them later)

2) Follow hashtag #BlackFish on twitter

3) Tweet your own thoughts and reactions with #BlackFish . You can also ask questions to our expert team.

See you there!

CNN.com FAIL: How many readers?

Posted on September 3, 2010 by David Shiffman

One of the first things I did when I woke up this morning was to check CNN’s website to make sure that the Outer Banks were still there. I was pleased to discover that everyone is ok, but something else on the homepage surprised me. CNN has been experimenting with ways to make their site more interactive, and one of the latest is a Facebook plugin. Whenever my Facebook friends share a CNN article, I can see that information on the CNN homepage (along the right side). I was a little shocked by how popular one of the articles was, and I took a screen capture of it.

Here it is zoomed in:

Considering there are approximately 7,000,000,000 people on the planet, I’m pretty sure that CNN does not have 300,000,000,000,000 readers. You normally only hear about numbers like that when people are discussing the attendance at political rallies.

~WhySharksMatter