CNN’s Ali Velshi is the latest network star to rise in popularity due to a major disaster, though this time it’s an economic one. Velshi has become CNN’s most visible business correspondent over the past year where he is known for his energetic expertise as well as his hip glasses and pin-stripes.
Velshi tries to keep the financial chaos under control and told Canada’s The Globe and Mail in a recent feature:
“You can’t not take the fire seriously, but you can’t be running out there like this is out of control and you’ve never seen it and you don’t know what to do. You may not have seen it [coming]. But people are looking to you to say, ‘Can you handle this?’ So we have to come across with a tone that says, ‘Well, folks, this is pretty big, but we have the tools to figure this out.’ Because if they see us panic, they panic.”
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He also commented on his role during CNN’s shifts in focus since the 2008 election:
His ascendancy at the network began at the end of 2007, when economic deterioration started and the American electorate focused on its importance in the run-up to the presidential election. “What we realized is that we so effectively deployed resources to cover politics – such that ‘CNN equals politics’ became an accepted idea. So we wanted ‘CNN equals money,’ and we had the resources to do it.”