Despite all that’s been reported about the Shroud (including debate over carbon dating conducted in 1988 to determine its age), it’s pretty clear that the program is less concerned with ascertaining whether the artifact is fake than it is with simply keeping an audience that hasn’t read much about it in suspense for as long as possible. Along the way, viewers are treated to what amounts to a Sunday-school recap, courtesy of the various talking heads, regarding what the Bible doesn’t tell us about Jesus and the horrors of crucifixion.
But maybe the producers, writers, talking heads and CNN, itself, realized they couldn’t ascertain whether the artifact is fake. Maybe a news agency is better at understanding this than a so-called history channel or a geographic society.