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Saturday, May 26, 2007
Al Gore: A bad habit of being right
By VictorM: What hasn't Al Gore been right about? On all topics that matter, Al Gore has been ahead of the pack and right in every case. From global warming to the internet, from the Iraq war to TV. Yeah, TV. Here's what he said on the Daily Show:"[M]y position is that all television is bad except my network, Current TV, and The Daily Show, and whatever show I happen to be watching at the time," Gore joked, before adding, "But in all seriousness, the television news programs have probably spent a lot more time on Britney Spears' shaving her head, and Paris Hilton going to jail, and Anna-Nicole Smith's estate lawyers and Joey Buttafuoco, and all this stuff, than they have spent giving us the facts — for example, telling us before the invasion of Iraq, that actually Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack of 9/11."Gore's comments about TV coverage of fluff over serious matters are more than just an opinion, they are a verifiable fact:
Both MSNBC and Fox News devoted more coverage to Anna Nicole Smith — three weeks after her death on Feb. 8 — than they did to the multiple developments involving the neglect and deplorable conditions at Walter Reed military hospital.And it's also a verifiable fact if we compare Anna Nicole Smith's death and the Iraq war itself:The most lop-sided coverage by far was aired by Fox News, which featured only 10 references to Walter Reed compared to 121 of Anna Nicole — roughly 12 times the coverage. MSNBC featured 84 references to Walter Reed and 96 to Anna Nicole.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism's news coverage index, a weekly look at what is at the top of America's news agenda, has revealed that of all programming on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel monitored by the project, 21% of it across the week was dedicated to Smith, pushing the Iraq war into second place with 15% of monitored minutes.OK, to do what the main news boys seem to think they need to do, I'll balance this post out. Mister Gore has been wrong on one thing: he supports the death penalty. What an evil guy!
Tags: Al Gore, Anna Nicole Smith, TV coverage, TV news
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A similar claim could be made for Sen. John Kerry, BTW.
I was thinking the other night how good it would be if CBS were to air even a week's worth of "CBS Evening News With Walter Kronkite" tapes or kinescopes from the height of the Cold War and Vietnam eras. Just 10 nightly broadcasts of serious, hard news anchored by a frontline correspondent from WW II and featuring on-scene reports from first-class journalists around the world.
No puff pieces about how ours has become a drive-up window culture or how much money balding men spend trying to re-cover their scalps. No deeply meaningful, highly emotional one-on-one interviews about how hard it is to be the only English-speaking cab driver in a New York borough or the only stay-at-home mom in a sprawling suburb.
I don't think CBS would dare rebroadcast those old nightly news programs, nor would any of the other networks air their old broadcasts. To do so would be to show up what pap and crap they're dishing out nowadays in ever-smaller, ever-less-sastisfying portions.
There's a reason we have president many Americans consider the all-time worst — and he even got re-elected. There's a reason people went for years believing al Qaeda was tied to Iraq, Iraq was involved in the 9-11 attacks and Saddam Hussein posed an imminent nuclear threat to the U.S.
Yes, Bush and all his loyal lockstep marchers in and out of government spewed lies and propaganda for over a year. But a lame, complacement and complicit corporate media carried the message, unquestioningly and uncritically, to a disgusting and disgraceful extent.
Maybe the scariest part of all is how so many in the media are still doing that kind of thing or at least treading lightly. Still preserving access. Still keeping the executive suite suits happy.
That leaves the U.S. public set up for the next debacle some crackpot pol wants to get us into.
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I was thinking the other night how good it would be if CBS were to air even a week's worth of "CBS Evening News With Walter Kronkite" tapes or kinescopes from the height of the Cold War and Vietnam eras. Just 10 nightly broadcasts of serious, hard news anchored by a frontline correspondent from WW II and featuring on-scene reports from first-class journalists around the world.
No puff pieces about how ours has become a drive-up window culture or how much money balding men spend trying to re-cover their scalps. No deeply meaningful, highly emotional one-on-one interviews about how hard it is to be the only English-speaking cab driver in a New York borough or the only stay-at-home mom in a sprawling suburb.
I don't think CBS would dare rebroadcast those old nightly news programs, nor would any of the other networks air their old broadcasts. To do so would be to show up what pap and crap they're dishing out nowadays in ever-smaller, ever-less-sastisfying portions.
There's a reason we have president many Americans consider the all-time worst — and he even got re-elected. There's a reason people went for years believing al Qaeda was tied to Iraq, Iraq was involved in the 9-11 attacks and Saddam Hussein posed an imminent nuclear threat to the U.S.
Yes, Bush and all his loyal lockstep marchers in and out of government spewed lies and propaganda for over a year. But a lame, complacement and complicit corporate media carried the message, unquestioningly and uncritically, to a disgusting and disgraceful extent.
Maybe the scariest part of all is how so many in the media are still doing that kind of thing or at least treading lightly. Still preserving access. Still keeping the executive suite suits happy.
That leaves the U.S. public set up for the next debacle some crackpot pol wants to get us into.
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