It's
no wonder that the public hates journalists. I'm ashamed to be a journalist. Yes,
again. Like little kids who continually put their hands in a flame and get burned every time, my
profession just never learns from its mistakes. We have an unfortunate habit of hyping the wrong
stories. Over and over. And when it comes to assessing the effect that our foolishness has on our
craft's reputation, it's practically a fatal flaw.
Media
Rubes: The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a "rube" as a "naïve or inexperienced
person," or "an awkward unsophisticated person." Clearly, no better set of adjectives can be found to
describe a great many American journalists, who together have managed to provide Obama with an 86 percent
favorable report rating, at least through March of this year.
It's
not News Unless it's Reported by a Mainstream Journalist. The Leftist "Media Matters" is scandalized
because Fox News reported an anti-Greenie story that was originally put on the net via a blog rather than by one
of the mainstream news organizations. … They couldn't question the truth of the story — because it is
true. The only thing to criticize that they could find was who reported the event.
Spitzer's
Media Enablers: The fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer holds many lessons, and the press will
surely be examining them in coming months. But don't expect the press corps to delve into the biggest
lesson of all — its own role as his enabler. … What makes this more embarrassing for any
self-respecting journalist is that Mr. Spitzer knew all this, and played the media like a Stradivarius. …
He doled out scoops to favored reporters, who repaid him with allegiance. News organizations that dared
to criticize him were cut off. After a time, few criticized anymore.
Network
TV News: Evil or Incompetent? In the complex and intense world of the 21st Century, an
informed and aware public is more essential than ever. Citizens are asked to make judgments on issues
and candidates where the decision could literally mean life or death for millions. And yet, what is the
public fed nightly by those over-paid "news" organizations at what is called the Networks? The public is
force fed a steady diet of propaganda, distortions and outright pap.
Media Malpractice:
Now I am not a scientist, but the idea that a few alleged degrees of warming — with none apparently in
the last decade — could cause an increase in earthquakes seemed pure quackery to me. So, I decided
to perform Google and Yahoo searches of the "scientist" who had issued the finding, one Thomas Chalko, MSc, Ph.D.
In less than five minutes I found that Chalko was perhaps the last person who should be quoted on the purported
impact of allegedly man-caused global warming.
CBS Pulls Unvetted
Story Blaming Earthquakes on Global Warming. CBS News and the Associated Press were quick to
regurgitate claims that global warming has increased the intensity of earthquakes fivefold in the past
20 years. But had either taken the time to investigate, they would have discovered that both
the source's facts and credentials were, if you'll pardon the expression, on very tremorous ground.
The Editor says...
I am amazed that a story like this got on the CBS web site, and may have aired on CBS stations. Anyone
with a milligram of critical thinking skills should be able to conclude that a one-half degree temperature
change is not enough to cause an earthquake, without having someone else point it out.
Has Big Media Global Warming
Bias Begun to Endanger the Public? Why did the AP and the [Boston] Globe de-emphasize Maine officials' snowpack
warning, especially when doing so endangered the property and safety of the public they are supposed to serve? The
Globe is owned by the New York Times Company. Both the Times and the Associated Press are heavily invested in the myth of
Global Warming….
This is what passes for journalism these days:
ABC
Fakes Muslim Prejudice, Unsurprisingly Finds 'Islamophobia' in America. Apparently to prove that
the US is filled with Muslim hating yahoos, ABC went on the hunt to find "Islamophobia" in America and the
result is "Witness to Discrimination: What Would You Do?" Since they didn't really know where to
find any, ABC News decided to create their own prejudice against Muslims by hiring an actress to put on Muslim
dress and get "confronted" by a Muslim hating coffee store server — also an actor hired by ABC.
Happy Birthday, Monicagate! The press loves
anniversaries of big public events because they're predictable, a quality seldom found in the news.
Coverage can be planned in advance. Stories can be written, laid out, and put to bed without any worry
that later developments will compel revisions. Sputnik is turning 50? Let's cover it. The
only thing it can possibly do while we're not looking is turn 51. Given this predisposition, I find
it worth studying the rare instances when the press accords a significant anniversary little attention.
Citizen journalist 1, MSM 0.
Is there anything that moves slower than a government bureaucracy? Actually, it seems that there is: the mainstream
media. Back on March 17, [2006,] I posted a story about FEMA going after people who received duplicate or fraudulent
Hurricane Katrina disaster payments. It was a followup to a February 13 story on the Government Accountability
Office's report on people defrauding FEMA. And despite their having access to the same sources I do — and a
whole lot more — it's taken the mainstream media until today [4/21/2006] to get a story out.
So Much More Than Just the New York Times.
Over the weekend NBC offered up their latest versions of Tim Russert's Meet the Press and the Chris Matthews
Show — the latter being political television's answer to Jerry Springer. In them we were
treated to two more glittering examples of all that is wrong with the Jurassic Press.
Highway Robbery: Rick Perry's vision for Texas,
the Trans Texas Corridor, made it through the State Legislature in 2003. H.B. 3588, the enabling
bill for the Trans Texas Corridor and, hence, the largest spending bill in the state's history, became law in
large part because Texas' mainstream press, used as a watchdog, was inexplicably asleep.
Ship collision with San Francisco Bay Bridge:
Despite many reports calling it a tanker, the Cosco Busan was actually a container ship, and the fuel on board
was solely for the purpose of running the ship.
Norman Hsu Who? Radio
personality Rush Limbaugh has coined the term "Drive-By Media" to refer to those in the MSM who shot up a
story and then leave others to clean up the mess, or not. First the WSJ broke the Norman Hsu story.
Then, last October the LATimes broke the story of the vanishing NYC Chinatown donors. Neither story was
completed. The "Drive-By's" just shot them up and drove on down the road. Meanwhile, where's Hsu
and what's his story?
It's Not Just Scott
Beauchamp. Scott Beauchamp was the last straw. I realized that I need a scorecard to keep
track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major and minor screw-ups in the
media. … Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest,
falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken
for a real soldier. Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some
are more serious.
It's Not Just Scott
Beauchamp — Part Two. Without too much extra effort, it was fairly easy to
add 21 more names to the "Media Hall of Shame" list, bringing the total to 83. With more
effort, I'm sure the total list could easily double.
In part three, the list grows to 101.
Media Dishonesty Matters.
Did you know that Time magazine and other news organizations had a Vietnamese communist on full-time staff
in Vietnam during that war? Do you remember that ABC, CBS and NBC have all rigged cars or trucks
with explosives or other devices to make them look dangerous on TV, or that Consumer Reports lied about
the Suzuki Samurai enough to put it out of business?
Treason, Plagiarism and The Washington Post:
Winning a Pulitzer Prize for a story about CIA "secret prisons" has been quite lucrative for Dana Priest of the
Washington Post. … But the article for which she won the prize not only damaged the security of the United
States and endangered the safety of American citizens but appears to have been largely based on the work of
London-based journalist Stephen Grey.
More Americans
turning to Web for news. Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional
journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news,
according to a new survey. … Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey
said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent
just a year ago. Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent
turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.
The End
of America As We Know It: [Scroll down] Add to that a heavily partisan, politicized environment
where different political parties can't even agree on the most basic facts, much less the issues —
and an incompetent mainstream media that cries wolf on an almost daily basis about something that's going to
kill us — and we're producing a society riddled with people who have extreme difficulty coping with
or even recognizing basic threats.
Journalism's Hoax on Duke: As the
late commentator and editor Michael Kelly wrote, "most journalists learn to see the world through a
set of standard templates into which they plug each day's events." The most obvious templates
concern race — whites are oppressing blacks, gender — men are oppressing
women, and class — the privileged are oppressing the poor. Since all three of
these templates were in play during the Duke race case, how surprising is it that this triple
high tide resulted in some of the worst journalism of the decade?
Don't
know much about voting. Two-thirds of those surveyed in NYU's Foundations of Journalism
course would trade their vote for a year's tuition, department chair Brooke Kroeger found. Twenty
percent would trade it for an iPod, and 90 percent would give up their franchise forever for
$1 million. At the same time, it is claimed, the students "value" their votes. About
70 percent still believe that one vote can make a difference. This result is strange for a
profession which counts "government watchdog" among its roles.
Journalism
School Probes Possible Cheating on Ethics Exam. It was an ethics exam in a journalism class, and
someone may have cheated. Ironic? Yes. Unfortunate? Certainly. But what made the
incident particularly notable was where and when it took place: at Columbia University, one of the
premier journalism schools in the country, at a time when media ethics are much in question.
The Iowa Scam: It is quite astonishing to see with
what deadpan and neutral a tone our press and television report the open corruption — and the
flagrantly anti-democratic character — of the Iowa caucuses.
Scooping the
mainstream media: The Associated Press reached a new level of incompetence, and the "news"
industry they serve doesn't seem to care. If you want political opinion, you'll find it in Associated
Press dispatches. If you want news, you might have to read conservative opinion columns.
The Media
is the Politics. The "debates" between the current crop of presidential wannabes bear little
resemblance to the stirring intellectual drama of Lincoln and Douglas, but they accurately reflect our
times. Short answers to trivial questions for short attention spans. There's little opportunity for
eloquence in a sound bite and it's not likely that television audiences would stay tuned if there were.
PC
Diversity In Newsrooms Elects Obama. The national media – especially when it comes to
the Democratic candidates – has hijacked much of the process by pompously and prematurely dictating
to the voters who was "top-tier" and who was "bottom-tier." Then, based on those prejudiced pronouncements,
the focus is on who got coverage and questions, and who was unceremoniously deposited on top of the slag heap.
Yes, She Can. Voters don't like to
be told for whom to vote by the press. Over the past two weeks, "Saturday Night Live" has spoofed the
media's fawning coverage of Obama. … Those "SNL" skits had an effect: the press doesn't enjoy being
made fun of, particularly with regard to how they do their jobs. The "SNL" skits pressured them to
question Obama more aggressively, and they did. He did not respond well.
A Culture of Corruption: The News Media.
What's Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground bomber William Ayers? Over the years, Ayers has raised
enormous sums of money for the Illinois senator. What was Obama's relationship with indicted moneyman Tony Rezko?
Over the years, it's been reported that Rezko raised over $14 million for Obama's campaigns. When Rezko was
indicted, Obama returned $85,000.00 to him. What happened to the other $13,015,000.00? What's Obama's
relationship with terrorist sympathizer Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University? Did Obama funnel money to his
pal Rashid — money that eventually ended up in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah terrorists? There are other
questions that these intellectual giants in the news media could at least ask, but don't hold your breath for
them to actually do their jobs.
Is 'Journalistic
Ethics' an Oxymoron? The Founding Fathers thought a free and skeptical press was
essential to the preservation of our political and economic liberties. The First Amendment
is first for just that reason. What would they think of today's generation of reporters
who hide from the truth, parrot the slogans of left-wing advocacy groups, fail to do their own
research, and routinely give politicians a free ride? My guess is they would be stunned.
Is news just the facts? Not
anymore. When I entered the field the ideal was to "... tell it like it is." Not
what I would like it to be, but simply lay out the facts. If one fact strongly supports a point of
view we were obligated to seek other facts that would dispute it. Unfortunately,
many of today's instructors teach what is called, "advocacy journalism."
The national news media provide publicity for
every crazed gunman who goes out with a bang.
Dial CNN for
Murder. The same dangerous pattern has been repeated again and again. The disturbed man who
took hostages at Sen. Clinton's headquarters in New Hampshire told loved ones to "watch the news tonight."
The shooter who terrorized an Omaha shopping mall by mowing down total strangers has achieved his goal (and I
will not add to the problem by publishing his name). He left a suicide note in which he predicted "at
least now I'll be famous." His picture is featured in every newspaper and is flashed on television
hourly. His miseries are being dissected and analyzed. ... And other disturbed people are watching
and taking note.
Media
madness: The Virginia Tech story. There seems to be just one template for the media in
covering tragedies like that which just occurred at Virginia Tech: Discussion of further regulation of
guns and so much coverage of the perpetrator that copycats are sure to be impressed. … Seeing the
glorification of the latest mass murderer, the next Cho may be already getting some ideas about how to
take follow in his footsteps.
Reducing
the risk of copycat killers: The way the media cover an event influences whether
there will be repetitions. For example, if a fan runs onto the field during a baseball
game, the broadcast cameras usually avoid showing pictures of the fan. The TV producers
know that the fan on the field is seeking attention, and that, presumably, getting his picture
on television will reward him. Moreover, broadcasting the man's antics would encourage
copycats.
Five
Questions about Shootings at Universities. The day after the mass murder of students at Northern
Illinois University (NIU), the headline in the closest major newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, was:
"6 Dead in NIU Shooting." "6 dead" included the murderer. Why wasn't the headline
"5 killed at NIU"? It is nothing less than moronic that the media routinely lump murderers
and their victims in the same tally. This is something entirely new. Until the morally confused
took over the universities and the news media, murderers were never counted along with their victims.
In
time of tragedy, media are at their worst. The press, particularly television news networks
… [are] competing with each other like starving dogs for the slightest new morsel of information they
can then put on a permanent loop on cable TV, until the next fragmentary detail is pried loose by a reporter
desperate to be first, for 15 minutes. Because there isn't enough new information to fill the
infinite void allotted to these stories, the press quickly succumbs to a kind of emotional vampirism, feeding
off the grief, fear and anguish of victims clearly incapable of understanding their own feelings….
Murder by media?
Did the non-stop playing of the Virginia Tech killer's twisted thoughts help to push a fragile mind in Houston
to walk the same grisly path? Has the airing of that video set in motion other killers and imitators who
may not carry out their copy-cat crimes for months or years?
The News Media Vs. the Innocent.
Years ago, Ray Donovan, Ronald Reagan's Labor Secretary, was prosecuted for corruption, only to be acquitted.
After the verdict, Donovan asked plaintively, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?" Steven
Hatfill knows where to go to get his reputation back. But upon arriving there, he finds the door blocked
by someone who says her privileges are more important than his good name. That someone, of course, is a
journalist. And, not surprisingly, she enjoys the broad support of other journalists, who have proved to
be slow learners about the obligations they share with their fellow citizens.
Hooked on trivia.
We try to hear and see no evil, but it's not far-fetched to suggest that future world events could quickly change
the lives of millions. So why then fixate on Anna Nicole, Rosie, Imus and Alec? Simple — they
are the modern equivalents of grotesque carnival freak shows that used to provide a perverse sense of escapism
from what people dare not face. Yet as our dependency on such tabloid distraction grows, so, too, do the
real dangers that we ignore.
AFP Takes
Lessons from TNR. The caption that accompanied the photo read: "An elderly Iraqi woman shows
two bullets which she said hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite
Baghdad suburb of Sadr City." … The only way these "bullets" could have hit the woman's house was if
they'd been thrown at it. They'd obviously never been fired.
Haditha Massacre: Media and Terrorist
Hoax? As charges against U.S. Marines — regarding an apparent fabrication of the
"Haditha massacre" — continue to be proved false and based upon unsubstantiated "evidence," only
some of the leftist media appear to be standing by their original spin on the story.
The
Liberal media are living in cocoons. Whenever you read the headline, "some say," you know
you are reading the opinions of the reporter. Some say the moon is made of green cheese, but what's the
difference? The story is only worth telling when "some say" what the reporter wants them to say.
A press storm over
secrets. The media may not be the most detested institution in America, but it is surely a
contender for the title. A Harris poll in March found that only 14 percent of American adults
express a "great deal" of confidence in the press, while 34 percent — one American in
three — have "hardly any" confidence in it.
Scalia rips judges on
abortion, suicide. [Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia expressed disdain for the news media
and the general reading public and suggested that together they condone inaccurate portrayals of federal judges
and courts. "The press is never going to report judicial opinions accurately," he said. "They're
just going to report, who is the plaintiff? Was that a nice little old lady? And who is the
defendant? Was this, you know, some scuzzy guy? And who won? Was it the good guy that
won or the bad guy?
Media
Should Have 'Outed' Foley. The finger-pointing in the Mark Foley scandal has curiously not focused
on one particularly powerful player complicit in allowing the Florida Republican to continue his detrimental
behavior for years: the American media.
Update:
After
election, Foley story fizzles. If ever a news story bolstered Rush Limbaugh's low opinion of the
"drive-by media," it is the tawdry saga of former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. When the story about Foley's
e-mails to former House pages first broke, cable news was All Foley/All the Time. … When the House
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct report came out this month finding no violations by GOP leadership
of House rules or standards, the once-big story devolved into news briefs and tepid editorials. No big
scandal, no big story.
Hillary and the Ghost of LBJ:
Much complained about every four years is the tendency of the media to play elections for the presidency as a
horse race. There is reason for this. Exciting, colorful, horse races never fail to capture an audience.
They have a winner and a batch of losers. But horse races always end. What the horse racing model of media
coverage never does is illuminate the long-term success or failure of the underlying ideas at stake in the ever
fluid, always forward-moving history of the American experience. But those ideas do win — and they
do lose. One of the most continually defeated ideas that has appeared in American politics is that
of weakness and appeasement in foreign policy.
Big Media are Repeatedly Wrong Claiming
'Record-High' Gas Prices. Since Hurricane Katrina swept ashore on the Gulf Coast, we've heard
seemingly countless reports of "record high" gas or oil prices. From the beginning of September last
year, the big three networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — have told us about record high gas
or oil prices close to 100 times. They've been wrong each and every time.
The
media's shabbiest moments. The year 2005 is ending as it began, with another
successful election in Iraq and a liberal media still flapping around trying to find other
controversies to submerge it. It does not matter to them that a Gallup poll found
that 74 percent of Americans express confidence in their military, but only 28 percent
express confidence in their newspapers or TV news outlets.
Jellyfish of the Year: The
intellectual flubber of Time's decision is manifest on many levels. Though some argue that
Time was patting the American people on the head for voting the way they wanted in the last election,
the more obvious explanation is that Time's editors didn't want to offend anybody. "If you choose
an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," Richard Stengel, Time's
newly vintaged managing editor, told the Associated Press. "But if you choose millions of people, you
don't have to justify it to anyone."
The KGB's Useful Idiots:
There are numerous examples of leftists unwittingly serving the Soviet cause in the 1980s, which today sit in
Communist government and media archives, some of which have been translated and are easily accessible in the
United States. There they gather dust, as liberal historians and journalists ignore them, failing to
do their jobs, never reporting the real history that exists.
Anchors
Aweigh: According to a Pew Research Center survey of 552 journalists and news media executives
from November 20, 1998 to February 11, 1999: "40% of journalists working for national news
organizations and 55% of those working for local outlets said that news reports were increasingly marred by
factual errors and sloppy reporting. About 60% said the boundary between reporting and commentary had eroded."
Funniest Media Gaffes of 2006: In the dubious
sources category: "Don Spille — A man who told the Tallahassee Democrat that he lost everything
in Katrina — including his father. Ed Spille Sr., his father, later contacted the newspaper to
disagree."
Media Report
of Raids on Tulsa Illegals Draws Outrage. A series of raids in Oklahoma last week led to the
arrests of 127 criminal aliens, fugitives and other immigration violators despite a TV station's news report
that not only exposed the operation to the public, but also described the people and the vehicles being used
in the effort.
This Ain't Nightline. It's not Ted Koppel's
fault that the New York Times has made him a Times contributing columnist. … [T]he fault belongs
to whomever assigned, accepted, and edited or rewrote Koppel's self-indulgent, self-congratulatory,
late-to-the-party, and punishingly obvious 1,500-word piece about the state of television
news. (It's bad.)
The Press And the Rush To Judgment. Remember
those January newspaper headlines heralding the survival of all 12 trapped miners in West Virginia? Even
the august New York Times reported "12 Found Alive 41 Hours After Explosion," but only one miner had actually
survived. In the frenzy to scoop competitors, reporters failed their journalistic responsibility, and
this penchant to rush to judgment before all the facts are verified is again occurring on two recent hot
button issues — homeland security funding cuts to New York City and the Haditha civilian deaths.
Life
after Ted Koppel: Koppel's debut as a New York Times columnist has been widely panned,
but it is a revealing column, for Koppel confirms what many of us had figured out as he and his broadcast
became increasingly irrelevant. He writes that journalists "should be telling their viewers what is
important, not the other way around." Finally, all of his cards are on the table and he's revealed
the contempt that he had for his audience all along.
The Worst of Times.
The New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days. The word from inside is that
approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees
have gotten on board. That means the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass
firing of journalists in its 156-year history.
Whatever happened to news as
information? Most hurricane reporters aren't exactly war reporters, so once they've
proved how hard the wind is blowing, they pack it in. … And have you noticed where most of
these reporters were "reporting" from? More often than not, it's either just outside their
station's office building or on the patio of some hotel. There's nothing seriously wrong with
reporting from your hotel, but it's awfully lazy.
Myths of rich
and poor: There is a fundamental difference between seeking the truth and scoring
points. In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts
of the media.
The
end of civilization was a joke. Potentially more dangerous than short-fused fanatics
is our own cowardice in declining to treat this madness as anything but inexcusably barbaric. Instead,
we kneel in apology for our own hard-won principles. Newspapers especially deserve contempt for
their spineless refusal to deal honestly with this controversy.
Journalists have become ambitious
courtiers. Gone are the days of the cheerfully humble reporter sticking
to the facts and keeping his opinions to himself. Today's media forget how much they
don't know. … You may have noticed, for example, how thoroughly the media omit
any religious perspective on the news — which means that they miss the
actual significance of the news for countless Americans. They utter self-assured
pronouncements about the Constitution from depths of confusion.
How the CIA Uses the
Press: One of the fascinating aspects of coverage of the Joseph Wilson
affair is the tendency of the media to go to the defense of the CIA, which arranged for
Wilson's dubious Africa trip.
When accountability is
compromised: The disgraceful affair of Wen Ho Lee, the onetime Los Alamos scientist
defamed but never tried for supposedly stealing nuclear secrets for China, is over. The U.S. government
and five news organizations will pay Lee $1.64 million for sliming him by publishing private information
from his personnel files to support espionage allegations that nobody could ever prove and that apparently
were unfounded.
Hiding
Barrett. In a very clever year-end column the venerable William Safire writing in the
New York Times asks whether "special prosecutor David Barrett's 400-page expose of political influence
within the Internal Revenue Service and the Clinton Justice Department" will be the government
report "most likely to resist investigative reporting" this year. I certainly hope not.
Media
Report Miracle Mine Rescue — Then Carry the Tragic Truth. In one of the most
disturbing media performances of its kind in recent years, TV news and many newspapers carried the
tragically wrong news late Tuesday and early Wednesday [1/4/2006] that 12 of 13 trapped coal miners
in West Virginia had been found alive and safe. Hours later they had to reverse course. … It
was "Dewey Defeats Truman" all over again.
United Flight Diverted
Because of Unruly Passenger. Boston's Channel 7, an NBC affiliate, reported that the woman had
a screwdriver, Vaseline and a note referencing the al-Qaeda terrorist group. [George Naccara, federal
security director for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration at Logan Airport] said she was not
in fact carrying any of these items.
Judith Miller, TWA 800 and
the Death of Press Freedom. All those wonderful federal sources who spoon-fed you, the
dominant media journalist, story after story for which you were praised and rewarded with even better
stories — as long as you did not demand that officially sanctioned stories be backed up
with actual documents and other provable facts. These "sources" would never again be available
to you if you ever crossed the Beast, the National Security State. You'd actually have to push
away from your desk, get out of your chair, go out into the cold, cruel world, walk past your favorite
pub and find sources.
And now, a touching, fake story of
bogus courage and false hope. Who can really blame student journalist Michael
Brenner, editor of The Daily Egyptian at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill., for
grabbing onto what seemed to be a really good story when it dropped into his lap? How was
he to know that it wasn't true at all?
The
Lines Between News and Entertainment are Blurring. An on-screen NBC News identifier for
a fictional debate on "The West Wing" and a "news conference" by a fake Boston Red Sox executive on
ESPN show how fuzzy the lines between news and entertainment have become.
Conventionally
Ignorant: Washington is an echo chamber. One pundit, one senator, one reporter
proclaim a snazzy "truth" and almost immediately it reverberates as gospel. Conventional wisdom
about Iraq is rarely questioned. A notion seems to find validity not on its logic or through
empirical evidence, but simply by the degree to which it is repeated and felt to resonate.
Why the media passes off bunk as news.
I like oddball news as much as anyone. In fact, I make a decent living showcasing a daily collection of
silly news, offbeat items, and real news with amusing headlines on my website, Fark.com, which attracts
3.5 million unique visitors each month. What's scary, though, is that the ratio of filler news to
real news is now so high that the content of Fark and major news websites is often nearly identical. That
should never happen because, in theory, mass media outlets are staffed by full-time, serious journalists who
have better things to do.
Too much TV drama over storms. We
are now celebrating the anniversary of the Katrina hurricane and if one did not know better, one would think
it was a fantastic event. … The hurricane season started a couple of months ago, and when watching TV,
reading the papers or listening to the radio, it was obvious that the media was waiting with bated breath
for the next disaster. The season is half over and we can report no disasters. They really are
disappointed.
Like the wind, hurricane predictions keep
shifting. Hurricane forecaster William Gray's team downgraded its predictions again for the
2006 Atlantic storm season Friday [9/1/2006], saying 13 named storms are likely to form this year instead
of 15. … Before hurricane season began June 1, Gray's team called for 17 named storms. He
trimmed that to 15 early last month.
Weather
has become bogeyman, news staple. It began as a mass e-mail in a certain Seattle
office building on December's first day. A cold front was arriving! Snow! Ice! Untold
inches for the city and surrounding area! … The cautious drove home after lunch. The brave
stayed behind. And the snow never came. Not even an inch.
Global Warming to Blame for Hot
Weather Hyperbole. A heat index of more than 100 degrees for days on end not only drains
the body and spirit, but it also takes its toll on the thesaurus. There is a limit to the number of
ways to describe the heat and still sound relatively intelligent.
Silly Talk:
How many times have you heard a weatherman say that the sun will try to come out later in the day? Sometimes
their prediction turns out to be false and I wonder whether they would explain it by saying the sun didn't try
hard enough. But it's not just weathermen who use teleological explanations, ascribing purposeful behavior
to inanimate objects.
The Media
Rush to Duke's Defense. Usually, reporters breathlessly take everything prosecutors and the
police say at face value, often to devastating effect upon criminal defendants. The "perp walk," in
which a suspect is paraded publicly in handcuffs from place to place, often after officials have told
television producers where to place their cameras, is only the most visible example of this practice. The
reporters get their shot. The police get to portray the defendant, innocent or not, as
dangerous (i.e. guilty) in the eyes of potential jurors.
All the
news is a stage. As they spin the Saddam trial and deride our soldiers in Iraq, the
lesson is clear: These media masters of theater are incapable of delivering real drama and
good news unless they control the script. Fortunately, you control the remote.
Clinton's Mythical
FEMA. While making the rounds of the network morning shows, [Senator
Hillary Clinton has] been very hard on the Federal Emergency Management Administration
and, of course, the Bush Administration. She went as far as complaining that Bush
damaged "Bill's FEMA." Naturally, the mainstream media are too lazy to
investigate her politically-charged exploitation of Katrina to not only revise her
hubby's legacy, but also to score brownie points as she eyes a 2008 presidential run.
Media Mind Control
in the War on Terror. By using graphic images, focusing only on what
they want you to see and hear, shaping events by reporting only on those that fit
the media's political agenda, ignoring anything that is counterproductive to their
goals, they control an empire that is actually a fourth arm of government.
Preserving the public
trust: Most of the truly profitable newspapers in the country today are essentially shopping
circulars with some cheap journalism printed on those pages not devoted to shopping mall sales. The
great newspaper chains take over local papers, fire journalists, and set out to fill their pages with
still more advertisements.
Major Journalism Scandal at
Sacramento Paper. As more comes to light about Diane Griego Erwin, the former
Sacramento Bee columnist, the more revealing and instructive the story becomes. It is a story we
mentioned in a recent Media Monitor, but
much more has come to light. In one sense, it is another validation for the New Media, specifically
the blogs; and for another, it shines a light on problems related to diversity in the newsrooms, when
diversity strictly refers to skin color.
USA Today's Reporting Scandals: USA
Today recently acted correctly to remove a reporter guilty of fabricating facts and sources for several
articles. Too bad they weren't so responsive several years when Michael Fumento reported
major errors in reporting on the Gulf War Syndrome story by a reporter named John Hanchette.
What's
Right About America! Last Sunday when I returned from church services I
opened my hometown newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and settled in with a
cup of coffee to review the day's news. It was a good thing I had already received
my inspiration at church, or I could have easily become downright depressed over the
negative headlines in nearly every section of the paper. The majority of headlines
on the front page of each section promised a story that would focus on the negative aspect
of an event or issue, rather than the positive contributions people are making to fix
the biggest problems we face.
Fake News from CBS. In 2002 the
Guerilla News Network published a piece written by staffers from a group called PR Watch. They
said that "For years CBS (and all the other networks) have run fake news stories in the form of video news
releases." What's more, the article, "CBS sells fake news," went on to announce that CBS also had gone
into the business of creating, producing and distributing so-called "fake news."
'48 Hours' apologizes for altered
image. The executive producer of CBS's "48 Hours Mystery" has apologized for airing an
altered image of the front page of the Tribune in an episode about the murder trial of Ryan Ferguson
that aired Saturday night [2/18/2006].
Playing with the
numbers: A UPI story a few months back reported that nearly 300,000 veterans
are homeless on any given night. If so, as blogger Megan McArdle pointed out a few weeks
ago on Asymmetrical Information, that would mean that every single homeless person in America
must have served in the armed forces, since 300,000 is about the total number of the homeless.
The News Business Is in
Decline. The evidence is the current emphasis on individual crime stories
and stories about the entertainment industry. … Today's newsroom resembles a Prudential
Insurance office. Smoking is forbidden, and there is only the faint clatter of
computer-keyboard keys. I knew the business was doomed when they put a salad bar
in the lunchroom. Today's journalists tend to be salad-eaters and joggers, and
those who smoke don't smoke tobacco.
Tony Snow and the
deteriorating media: President Bush's new White House Press Secretary is all the rage. But
unfortunately, Tony Snow's appointment will only feed the media's craving for personal recognition and
attention. One of the major problems with the media today is too much focus on the "personality"
delivering the news, while any actual substance of the news takes second stage.
Don't put much
stock in the TV experts. Stocks go up and down, but eventually, most go up. So if
you invest and hold on, odds are you'll do quite well.
Schools for
Scribblers: On the education of young journalists, there has been much recent
debate. There is one argument over whether or not journalists should aspire to objectivity
and another about the liberal bias that permeates journalism programs. But the problem
isn't that journalists are being taught improperly; it's that the foundations of journalistic
education are faulty.
Soft on the stars'
scientology. Many people believe, as I do, that Scientology is a cult, an oppressive
organization that splits families and milks believers for every cent they can muster. But to
entertainment journalists, Scientology is about as harmless as scuba diving.
Believing
the worst: There is an unspoken but real impulse in today's media to see
themselves as "independent" of America, even above America, not so much because they are
superior to America but because America is so egregiously flawed. It is their role
to shed light on America's failings. They're not keen at being seen as
Americans. They choke at the idea of wearing flag pins.
Fannie
Mae's bailout tab: Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage
association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year. It has
accounting errors of about $11 billion. [That's Enron × 19.] This
is news — $30 billion worth of news — but only
print reporters are out there covering it regularly. TV news is out to lunch.
The
hardest numbers: Polls on unfamiliar issues are notoriously volatile,
and results can shift wildly when questions are worded slightly differently.
Poor
reflections in the media mirror. The mainstream public does not
perceive that the "mainstream media" takes the time to check facts and eschews
opinion in its "reporting." According to the Pew Center for the People and
the Press, only 35 percent of Americans think the media get the facts right.
The
Collapse of Big Media: Starting Over. They've seen their audiences
shrink, they've had to worry about vigorous new competitors, and they've suffered
more than a few self-inflicted wounds — scandals of their own making. They
know that more and more people have lost confidence in what they do. To many
Americans, today's newspaper is irrelevant, and network news is as compelling as
whatever is being offered over on the Home Shopping Network. Maybe less.
Ending
a losing streak: The left is on another losing streak today, and so their
intellectual leaders in the liberal media have gone back to the old playbook for an easy
win that will get their team out of its slump. This time, it is the rich getting
richer and the poor getting poorer, which has been working for them since the days
of Karl Marx.
Fred Barnes Calls
Sheehan a "Crackpot," Rues Media Focus on Her. Barnes criticized both
her and the media's treatment of her: "This woman wants to go in and tell the
President that the war is about oil because the President wants to pay off his
buddies. She's a crackpot, and yet the press treats her as some important protestor."
The Brawley Case of the
South: [Scroll down] Reluctance to change a popular story line helps account for the strange press
coverage of Cindy Sheehan. That line pitted moral mom versus stone-hearted president. When
Ms. Sheehan's outbursts grew stranger, the press stayed with the soft line about a mother's grief
and simply omitted her increasingly bizarre comments that American troops were "being sent to kill innocent
people" in Iraq and that President Bush was "a filth spewer" and "an evil maniac" guilty of "blatant
genocide." The insurgents who killed her son Casey, on the other hand, were "freedom fighters."
Did
someone mention Cindy Sheehan?
Self-indulgence: The
enraged speeches and street disorders across the country that accompanied the
inauguration of President Bush may tell us more than we want to know about what is
happening to this country. Elections are supposed to be an alternative to other
ways of settling political differences, including riots, military coups and
dictatorships. But riots have been re-christened "demonstrations" by the
mealy-mouth media.
Tainted
media: Who in the major media has asked why John Kerry would need to be
issued an honorable discharge during the Carter administration, years after leaving
the navy, unless his original discharge was less than honorable? One of Jimmy
Carter's first acts as President was to issue an order granting amnesties to draft
dodgers who had fled the country during the Vietnam war and also allowing an upgrading
of military discharges that had been less than honorable.
The Desperate
Mainstream Media Go Racist. Imagine that when far-left California Rep. Maxine
Waters was running for office, a number of Republicans didn't like her platform and so they
called her "Aunt Jemima" or depicted her as a slave girl who took her marching orders from
her "massa," Terry McAuliffe. This is exactly what happened — in articles
and political cartoons — during the confirmation hearings of Condoleezza Rice as
secretary of state. And how did the Mainstream Media cover this rank racism? Not
by calling it by its name and not by condemning Sen. Robert Byrd, the former Grand Kleagle of
the Ku Klux Klan, who led the Democratic pack in delaying Rice's ascendance to this august
position. Instead, they were uniformly mute about the racist assaults and slavishly
echoed Rice's critics.
How to skew the news without really
trying. As columnist Jill Stewart notes, "disingenuous reporters hate … term limits because
reporters must woo new legislators every eight years, working their butts off for leaks and cell phone
numbers." Journalism depends on access. Term limits, by making old cultivated sources of access
irrelevant every few terms, make reporters work harder. Why would they want that?
Be Doubly Afraid Of Cell Phones Lost In
Airports. Earlier this week, a scare story about the supposed dangers of hidden data left on used
cell phones did the rounds, spurred on by a self-serving vendor's "research". … Somehow, stories
like this would be a lot more believable if they didn't originate from vendors who just happen to have a
solution to these invented problems for sale.
News 4 sale: Local newscasts
are passing off corporate press releases as news, according to a new report.
The Editor says...
Manufacturers and marketers of new products know how local TV news works. The stations
have time to fill, and one of the highest priorities is getting video on the air other
than a studio camera pointed at the happy team of news anchors.
Pre-packaged "news" stories, called Video News Releases (VNR's) are fed via satellite, sometimes two or three
times a week. In some cases, the items are syndicated and available only to subscribing stations, and in
other cases they're made available to any station that wants them. Someone at the station looks them over,
and decides if the donated items are interesting enough to use as filler. Naturally, the "news" in each
story is about some problem that a new product — a drug or gadget or software package —
will fix, and that's the point of the story. Sometimes, the satellite feed contains footage of the product,
along with "suggested anchor lead-in" scripts, and sometimes it is a complete pre-produced "package,"
essentially a 90-second infomercial, ready for air. Small market stations probably put the stories
on the air exactly as they were received. In larger markets, if it's interesting enough, the story
is given to a reporter, who then re-records the announcer track in his or her own voice, often without
even rephrasing it (except to remove verbs!), making it look like (s)he went out and dug up the
story. Thus the station gives the appearance of providing "local news" coverage, without spending
any money, and without mentioning that the footage was shot a thousand miles away by somebody else.
There has apparently been some backlash to the story above, because the news managers at many stations
are now being careful not to run VNR's.
Rumsfeld
gets pranked. Young students in journalism school ought to be taught
that "by their stories, you shall know them." The media reveal their opinions
about the world not only in their endless pontificating verbiage, but in the topics
they choose. The "news" becomes whatever floats their boat, whatever they
urgently want the people to know.
There is much more about this incident in News
media issues related to the war.
Reporter
behind Rumsfeld grilling. An embedded reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free
Press is claiming credit for the blunt questioning yesterday [10/8/2004] of Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld by American soldiers in Kuwait.
Editor's Note:
There is a difference between a journalist and an activist. A journalist tells
the reader what's happening. An activist makes things happen (and then
reports it). The reporter who supplied this question is evidently an anti-war
activist and a troublemaker who was only there to make a name for himself.
Simpletons
in the press. Can we have a serious political debate in this country any
more? Why is it that when a politician, addressing an important national
issue — articulating the position held by an overwhelming majority of
Americans — is ridiculed, his words distorted, twisted, caricaturized?
The Malkin
Media Diversity Test: The diversity they seek is, by definition, skin-deep. They
call themselves "journalists of color." Not journalists of substance. Or journalists of
integrity. Or journalists of independent thought.
When diversity is only
skin-deep: What the convention should have been told is that it is neither moral nor
progressive to view the world through a racial prism. Unity's "journalists of color" should have heard
the blunt message that journalism does not need more reporters and editors of color. It doesn't need
more white journalists, either. What it needs are men and women of talent and integrity —
adults who have no interest in a "diversity" that is merely skin-deep.
"Partial
truth" abortion: Many in the media resent any suggestion that they are
either politically biased or that journalists' personal views stop them from doing a
good professional job of accurately reporting the news. The way the issue of
partial birth abortion has been reported — or not reported — gives
the lie to such protests.
Use and Abuse of
Euphemism: Whatever you think of the practice of partial-birth abortion, surely no one can truly
be pleased with the media convention of describing it as "a certain abortion procedure" or "a controversial
abortion method." … Even the practice of referring to it on the second, third, or fourth mention as
"what opponents call 'partial birth' abortion" is questionable. What do supporters call it?
Let's keep
arguing. It's true that we have more semistructured "Crossfire"-style debates
than ever before. But much of this is rigidly preprogrammed sniping (I was once
chastised by a TV producer for not interrupting other speakers more. What a
failure!) Even when the sniping is downplayed, TV demands sharp sound bites,
which pushes all talking heads toward more vehemence and simplemindedness. Instant
certainty becomes mandatory, a delivery style many talking heads start to regret
before they're even out of the studio. Where is the real debate?
Blame
uninformed voters. Whether you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or
Republican, if your only news source is the boob tube you are simply underinformed,
though not necessarily misinformed. Unfortunately, most Americans are
underinformed.
None Dare Call It
Fascism. After Johnson's War on Poverty, Nixon's War on Drugs, and Carter's Energy Crisis, then
came the premier liberal crisis of modern times, the Environmental Crisis. The media predictably plays
an enthusiastic accomplice in these schemes, not just because its members are mostly liberal, but more
importantly, crises generate more readers, viewers, and listeners. This is why the principal product
American media sells to its customers is crisis, not information.
Paper
Uses Global Warming Activist's Press Release as News Story. The Palm Beach Post was caught in a
bit of deception by one of its readers over the weekend. ... Unfortunately for the reputation of Dara Kam and
that of the paper, this "article" was merely a rewording of the press release of an environmentalist group
calling themselves, Environment Florida. An alert reader who wrote in calling them on it also exposed
several other papers across the country that did the very same thing.
Climate
Reality Bites. Thankfully, the American system makes it hard for colossal tax and regulatory
burdens to foxtrot into law without scrutiny. So we hope our politicians will take responsibility for
the global-warming policies they say they favor. Or even begin to understand what they say they favor.
For a bill as grandly ambitious as Warner-Lieberman, very few staff, much less Senators, even know what's
in it. The press corps mainly cheerleads this political fad, without examining how it would work or
what it would cost.
Media
ignorance: Many media people have been journalism and/or communication
majors. Most of these programs have little analytical rigor. Along with departments of
education, they are a dumping ground for the most ill-prepared students. That might
explain a lot.
Von Hoffman: TV Media
Biased and Inept. "Left, right and center, people by the tens of millions have stopped
watching network news," columnist Nicholas von Hoffman concludes. "And that may be a healthy
thing if it betokens skepticism, disbelief and an effort to find out for one's self."
Bias,
Witting and Unwitting, Among the Gods of Journalism
All the News We Get From the
ACLU: In case you aren't able to read ACLU press releases for yourself, The Associated Press
and The New York Times will helpfully restate them for you as important, breaking "news."
CNN called Castro's
"megaphone": After analyzing every Cuba-based story that has appeared on CNN since it established
a Havana bureau five years ago, the Media Research Center is calling the network a "propaganda tool for
Fidel Castro's government" and a "megaphone for a dictator."
Sensationalism vs Journalism
Just reporting the news (if there is any) won't generate ratings as effectively as
reporting news items with an emotional twist. For example, shootings, fires, train
derailments, and police standoffs always seem to be "dangerously close" to a school. With
schools only a quarter of a mile apart in the big cities, there's always one near enough to
make that connection.
I recall an occasion a couple of years ago when there was a gang-related shooting in east Dallas
just after midnight one night, right next to an elementary school, and the next morning there was
a reporter on the scene fretting about how the shooting took place "dangerously close" to the
school. But logically, that was the best possible place for a shooting in the middle of the
night — when nobody's at school!
Reporters often use meaningless one-dimensional statistics; for example, "Texas leads the nation
in big-rig accidents." (That's a quote from a recent story designed to drum up support for
some new state law.) That makes it sound like the truck drivers on Texas highways are more
dangerous than anywhere else. But Texas has more highway mileage than most other states,
and lots of really bad drivers on the road.
But there are more subtle components of media sensationalism that the average viewer hardly
notices, at least consciously. Major market stations spend millions of dollars every
year on futuristic news sets, lighting, catchy music, sound effects, visual effects,
character generators and various kinds of electronic graphics. TV newscasts are staged and
choreographed as thoroughly as a small-town play. In the old days, a middle-aged
white man sat behind a plain old desk and reported the news. That's not enough,
in today's TV market. The happy news team — representing all race and
gender combinations — sits behind a Star Trek desk and reads whatever comes
up on the TelePrompter. They rarely use words that are longer than three syllables.
The high-priced news readers are really good at putting on a phony "concerned" look at just the
right time, if Botox permits. And if you'll notice, they are usually just stating the
obvious, and only rarely does anyone speak on a single subject for more than five seconds.
Yellowcake and Yellow Journalism:
On MSNBC they're covering the [Scooter Libby] trial like it's the Normandy Invasion, starring Elvis Presley,
as told by Joseph Goebbels. MSNBC's "reportage" consists of endless repetition of arbitrary assertions,
half-truths and thoroughly debunked canards. No one else cares about the trial — except presumably
Scooter Libby — so the passionate left is allowed to invent a liberal fable without correction.
Yellow Science: Man has
always had a healthy desire for knowledge, and it is the feeding of this hunger that ennobles journalism.
Hearst and Pulitzer were acutely aware that man has a less healthy but no less voracious desire to believe that
he has knowledge, particularly knowledge of something sensational. It is the feeding of this hunger that
irreparably disgraced journalism, and a century later now threatens to do the same to science.
Paris, Lindsay and A-Rod? We Don't Care!
Apparently, the causal relationship between the media's supply of celebrity gossip and the public's demand for
it is a two-way street. America's seemingly insatiable appetite for celebrity scandal is a troubling sign,
but here's an even more alarming truth: Our enemy — facing the most powerful military force
in history — has never concealed its belief that its ultimate triumph, as well as our ultimate
demise, will come about because Americans are too fat, lazy and decadent to care enough to fight for
their civilization and their values.
Movie shows photo fraud involved in wartime
journalism. Numerous examples of Photoshop embellishment and throw-down toys carefully
arranged by news photographers to evoke emotion.
Amped-up storm coverage
may become the norm. Nearly a year later, hurricanes Katrina and Rita are still fresh on Gulf
Coast minds, and Houston's television stations are trending toward more aggressive storm coverage.
The Editor continues to rant...
How can someone report current events aggressively without dishonest hype? What
does "aggressive coverage" really mean anyway? It means the poorly educated masses in
Houston will be drenched, if you will, with sensational, pessimistically speculative, tabloid
television. This style of "journalism" benefits only the TV stations and their advertisers,
not the viewers.
How a New York Times reporter's passion
for Castro led him astray: Aha! Finally we've discovered the missing ingredient
in American journalism, the vitamin deficiency that's been shrinking newspaper circulation and TV
newscast audiences all these years. What Americans clamor for is not information but passion.
The heroes of the coverage of Katrina were not the reporters who got the most accurate stories but
the ones who shouted the loudest or cried the hardest.
TV News Meets the Vast
Wasteland: Those amusing, though sadly depressing man-in-the-street interviews are an indication
that the American hoi-polloi get whatever knowledge they may have only from TV newscasts, not printed
material. For this reason, national TV news has become increasingly more dependent on the sensationalism
that their entertainment brethren can provide to attract viewers. It's sometimes hard to determine where
news coverage leaves off and entertainment begins, but the signs have been around for a long time. The
O.J. Simpson day-by-day trial was the most egregious example, but John Kennedy Jr.'s fatal flight coverage was
a close second in televised excess. Aging stalwarts like Barbara Walters think they can alternate
between slobbering celebrity interviews and interrogating prominent political figures without suffering
a lack of credibility.
Barbara Walters is not a role model.
She's written a tell-all autobiography. And she's promoting it on ABC, which continues to employ her.
Once upon a time, legitimate news organizations would not have allowed a conflict of interest like this.
ABC Even Complains About
Charity. No good deed goes unpunished — that was the theme of an ABC Christmas day segment
about donating clothing to charity. "World News Tonight with Charles Gibson," took "A Closer Look"
at charities and gave the appearance of dishonesty.
RIP:
protest films, e-porn and bimbos. Year's end is a time of many media traditions. For example,
the tearing away of the last page of the calendar is all the excuse TV producers need to recycle hours of sensational
video footage of dubious news value on the pretense that viewers need to relive the last 365 days. ... And
then there's the practice of "spotting trends" from the year. Trend-spotting has become something of an
obsession with today's journalists, particularly at newspapers coping with the fact that they don't "break"
news the way they did in the past.
Long Winter
for the Media. It is an unsettling time to be a journalist. You are either on the edge of
extinction or in charge of the universe. The newspaper industry is condemned to write piecemeal its own
obituary without knowing when or how — or, truth be told, if — the end will come.
Broadcast media now possess a self-inflated importance that they rarely bother to deny.
The L.A.
Times's Human Wrecking Ball. Great newspapers take decades to build. We are discovering
that they can be dismantled in relatively short order.
Fence
fiasco: Or Feliz ano nuevo. The decline of American sovereignty would typically
be a big story in any year, but with all the news coming out of Hollywood this year, maybe it
was a bit overshadowed by more significant events. I mean, how can the virtual surrender
of a 231-year-old nation to the Pollyanna-ish forces of political correctness possibly compete
with the dramatic real-life struggles of Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, and the
nation's hot new nymphet, Britney's baby sister, Jamie Lynn Spears?
Summertime, and the news is so
cheesy. Last year's Great August Story was left-wing activist Cindy Sheehan's absurd campout
near the president's Texas ranch, which, much to the dismay of Mrs. Sheehan, was interrupted only after
Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Remember the Summer of the Shark? That was 2001, when
the media hyped shark attacks, despite the widely acknowledged fact that the season's attacks were no higher
than previous seasons'.
Bigotry and Sports:
Although not too many years ago, sports-writing was considered the "toy department" of journalism, the boys and
girls in the press box have been eager to catch up to their counterparts in the "real" world. And so, they
are also no longer content with merely reporting the scores, trades and what have you; they must now generate
the news. And, similar to the mainstream media, they need divisive issues in order to push the agenda of
all J-school graduates: to change the world.
Hurricane Hype Clouds Warming
Debate. ABC's Jeffrey Kofman sounded the alarm about storms so bad scientists "are now considering
adding a fearsome category 6. That's hurricanes of more than 175 miles an hour. Something no
one would want to meet head-on." No one did. Category 6 wasn't even added, and the chorus of
media hype about another deadly season of storms turned into so much hot air. That's right -- forecasts
for the 2006 hurricane season, which ends November 30, have proven entirely wrong. Instead of
17 tropical storms and hurricanes, we got only nine.
Frivolous
politics: In these grim and foreboding times, our media have this year spent incredible amounts
of time on a hunting accident involving Vice President Cheney, a bogus claim that the administration revealed
Valerie Plame's identity as a C.I.A. "agent" — actually a desk job in Virginia — and is
now going ballistic over a Congressman who sent raunchy e-mails to Congressional pages. This is the
frivolous media — and the biased media.
9/11 Myths, Debunked. Trust that
conspiracy theorists will attempt to exploit the fifth anniversary of 9/11 to spread sensational claims and
sensational lies. Moreover, it's a fair bet sensationalist media will collaborate, not because the
squawk show host or headline scribbler believes the poisoned foolishness, but because anger, fear and
trembling sell.
Shepard Smith Smears Swift Boat
Vets. While some press attention has been focused on the seeming odd-couple of Rupert
Murdoch raising money for Hillary Clinton, another fascinating relationship has apparently been developed
between Fox News and Hugh Hefner's Playboy. Fox News' Neil Cavuto aired an interview with Hugh Hefner
on May 4, on the grounds that the announcement of his "Playmate of the Year" was "business news," and
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is interviewed in the June issue of Playboy magazine.
Al Gore and the Global Warming
Scare. People are naturally prone to worry about dangers that are invisible: radioactivity, for
one spectacular example. The media know this, and are forever trumpeting the discovery of new perils
to scare us with. Hardly a week passes without someone announcing that some familiar food or other
useful substance has just been discovered to cause cancer (though usually only when administered in huge doses
to mice). Dangers associated with weather are special favorites because they are usually so difficult to
cope with. In recent decades, we have been treated to alarmist reports about impending disasters to be
caused by nuclear winter, acid rain and the ozone hole. But the Big Daddy of all such scare stories
is "global warming."
Did
someone mention Global Warming?
TV Jumps on Stale NSA Database Story. Like the TV
coverage, USA Today's story insinuated that the existence of the database was a major violation of Americans'
privacy rights and evidence that the President was lying last December when he described the NSA's eavesdropping
on suspected terrorist communications as limited and targeted.
Simply Put, the US Mainstream
Media Provides an Inferior Product. They may have the most advanced technology for delivering
the news and the flashiest sets, graphics and promotional tactics; they may have scoured the earth for the
"prettiest" people who can read Teleprompters and those with the most important sounding voices, but they
have sacrificed their credibility at the altar of the almighty advertising dollar and because of that the
public's trust in the mainstream media is shattered.
Drivin' and Not Cryin'? When it
comes to gas prices, the media too often know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Flip
open a paper and turn on the TV and you'll learn that gas prices are rising again. "Stormy 6 Weeks
Ahead" says CBSNews and warns consumers to expect "pain at the pump."
Digging for the
truth: Too many journalists fail to dig deeply enough to get to the real story. They
breathless hype the latest scare about everything from pesticides and "road rage" to cell phones and
irradiated food. Deadly dangers lurk everywhere, and your Intrepid Reporter is all that stands
between you and certain disaster.
Media eat up
absurd rape story. I called it back in April. When a black stripper claimed three white
Duke University lacrosse players gang-raped her at a party, I knew instinctively it was a lie. The
tale reeked of Tawana Brawley-like fabrications.
Movie shows photo fraud involved in wartime
journalism. Numerous examples of Photoshop embellishment and throw-down toys carefully
arranged by news photographers to evoke emotion.
Hold that
opinion. Opinion journalism — the business not of reporting what happened, but of
commenting on it — tends to place a premium on speed. When that story breaks on Tuesday,
members of the pundits' guild spring into action as well. Editorial writers and columnists tell their
readers what the news means. TV talking heads and radio pontificators pass judgment. Internet
bloggers — the commentariat's newest, increasingly influential players — scramble
to weigh in.
CBS Whips Up Worry about Hurricane
Season: The first day of spring [2006] proved perfect timing for the CBS's Jim Acosta to resurrect
global warming as the villain behind last year's hurricane season, downplaying how hotly debated the matter
is in the scientific community.
NASCAR Furious
With NBC Over 'Dateline' Segment. "It is outrageous that a news organization of NBC's
stature would stoop to the level of going out to create news instead of reporting news," [NASCAR
spokesman Ramsey] Poston said [4/5/2006]. "Any legitimate journalist in America should be
embarrassed by this stunt. The obvious intent by NBC was to evoke reaction, and we are
confident our fans won't take the bait," he said.
ABC Hatches Weeklong Series on
Bird Flu: In 2003, ABC questioned government's bioterrorism warnings, but now emphasizes
the latest concerns on bird flu.
Are You Satisfied With Your TV
News? Sound bites! They may be the death of Western civilization! The triviality of
our network and local TV news is well known. Locally, so much of the local channels give us a steady diet
of blood and guts that is debilitating. All the accidents, the murders, the court appearances of sordid
criminals, the crimes of all descriptions seem to be their main focus.
The propaganda broadcasting
network: The definition of propaganda describes ABC News' decision to enlist the services of
actor and teenage heartthrob, Leonardo DiCaprio, to interview President Clinton about the environment:
"the spreading of ideas, information or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause
or a person."
Cool Britannia:
Sometimes, during what are called "slow news periods," newspapers and magazines struggle to fill pages.
In America at least, they solve this problem several ways: by printing what are generously called "puff
pieces", by covering tabloid trash stories, or by recycling old items to try to get more mileage out of
them. We seem to be in one of those times nationally, even with the so-called "war on terrorism."
When George W. Bush choking on a pretzel is the big story of the week, you know it is a
slow news time.
How
CNN Creates The News: CNN's "Compound" Interest: Their interest
is in ratings and sensationalism, not in accuracy or justice.
Soft
News Erodes Audience: The rise in "soft news" and "critical
journalism" could be turning off traditional news audiences, according to a Harvard University
study. Soft news was defined as being typically more sensational,
more personality-centered, more entertainment-oriented and more incident-based
than traditional public affairs news.
Christmas with Hef: They claim
that she gets "the big stories." But MSNBC's Rita Cosby continues to dig in the bottom of the
barrel to attract an audience.
Our
most destructive kind of racism. Paula Zahn devoted two of her hour-long CNN shows this week to
the topic "Skin Deep: Racism in America." After taking the time to watch, the question I walked away with
was: "What was the point?" In my view, the shows told us little that most of us don't already
know — strong racist sentiments exist in the country — and really never asked the deeper
and more important questions about what this means and why we should care.
O.J., "Kramer"
and limits: This "If I Did It" book and TV interview monstrosity was deliberately planned for the
last week of the November sweeps, and Simpson reportedly was to be paid a cool $3.5 million for his
efforts. It was a disaster. Fox News Channel discussed the story relentlessly, obviously promoting
both the book and the upcoming interview, but it backfired and open revolt ensued.
Newsroom Clichés
Why do reporters and news anchors constantly refer to ordinary people
as "folks"? When will they stop using "absolutely" as an expletive? Why
are politicians called "lawmakers" in the press when nobody uses that term in
person? When was the last time you went somewhere and then "fled the scene?" The
Medical Examiner probably doesn't actually say, "I pronounce you dead at the
scene", but that's the way it's often reported when someone dies on the highway. What
are these news writers thinking?
The most overworked cliché in the field is the ubiquitous "How do you feel?" to which every
reporter resorts when he or she runs out of ideas during an interview. Of course, many reporters
start out with that question because it makes the other guy talk a lot, and because it adds emotional
appeal to the story. (If they start to cry, zoom in!)
I'm sure to face stiff opposition from some of you, but you owe it to yourself to keep reading.
Lake Superior State University Banished Words
List. This "breaking news" just in: Lake Superior State University releases its 31st annual List
of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.
And then there's this…
Lake Superior State University 2005 List of
Banished Words.
Groaners! You know 'em. You
love 'em. But can't we live without 'em? Groaners are those horrible, overused, hackneyed
phrases that turn news copy into boring, "same old, same old" stuff. This is a list of some of
the worst offenders.
[But they left out "every parent's worst nightmare", "an emotional roller coaster"
and "a mile-long path of destruction."]
Sports Clichés: The Sports Cliché List
was assembled from a detailed survey of numerous player and coach interviews, pre-game, post-game, and
halftime analyses, sports radio commentaries, television sportscasts, and printed sports
reports. … For the purpose of this website, we define a sports cliché as an
expression that has been used in and around sports with sufficient frequency over a protracted
period such that it is "tired" at best and meaningless at worst.
At the end of the day, do an about-face on
clichés. Chris Pash is an executive with Factiva, the database company that loads news
articles from 10,000 sources, including 1,600 American newspapers. [He took] the leading 55
clichés and developed a detailed index which charted how often each cliché was used and
which publications used that cliché the most.
More Clichés Than You Can Shake a Stick At. Some
of these are classics. Others might more accurately be called newspaper or media jargon because you'll
never see or hear these phrases anywhere else. What normal person says "densely wooded area"
or "blueprint for growth" in everyday — or any — conversation?
Inspiring 'overcomer' stories are
newsroom cliches. "Supercrips are everywhere in the media," Wolfe went on. "The person
with no use of her arms who paints masterpieces with her feet, the guy with Tourette's syndrome who becomes
a radio announcer, Stephen Hawking explaining the universe from his wheelchair. And, of course,
that blind mountain climber."
Banned For Life: This page is devoted to those
expressions so hackneyed and insufferable that they should be forever banned from the nation's news
reports.
rising tide of clichés, The.
Periodically an old (or hoary old) question is raised. Is the standard of writing at the BBC declining
(or plummeting or plunging or even in free-fall)? Or is it improving (or soaring or rocketing)? ... It is
lucky for the BBC that the only people who continue to be worried about such matters are the Radio Four audience,
and the smattering of news snobs who insist in a superior fashion that they much prefer the World Service bulletins.
Listeners to other networks give no sign of knowing or caring about good English. The same applies to the
television news, in which words count for almost nothing.
The Cliché Community:
But let's turn the page! Paul[ McCartney]'s right that the times are ever-changing, but I wish they'd change a little more
quickly, so we could get a new set of insta-clichés and cant phrases for everybody to start using all at once —
or better, so we could all return to using the perfectly fine words we were using before we popped these new verbal pacifiers
into our mouths.
Obsolescent Media
All over the country, newspapers are going into financial decline. Newspapers are rapidly becoming
obsolete because kids in public schools are not being taught how to read a newspaper. Not only do the
kids not have the patience to leaf through the paper, after cruising the internet or watching TV, they also
have not been trained to approach the news media with cautious skepticism. As the kids become adults,
they don't look through the newspaper for anything more than coupons, bargains and freebies.
At the same time, TV viewership is declining because the internet is becoming the sensible place to go
for national news and local weather. You can find out what you want to know at any time of
day, and you can read all about every substantial news story in the country in five minutes on the
internet. The viewing public is tiring of television news because it is dumbed down, sensationalized,
and heavily commercialized. The news is reported in such a manner that any simpleton with a 3,000-word
vocabulary can easily understand it. Commercial breaks are getting longer, and there is apparently
some competition to see who can make the most insipid, vulgar and crass advertisements. The stations'
self-promotions are sometimes just as objectionable -- you can't watch just one TV show without being
pelted with bits and pieces from every other show on that channel.
Of course the news is dispensed only at the TV stations' scheduled times, so unless you watch cable news
channels, you have to wait until the TV station is good and ready before you can hear what's
new. Listen carefully and you'll notice that a large percentage of local "news" is really
just a series of statements from the state and local government. I'd hesitate to say it's propaganda,
most of the time, but TV reporters rarely question anything they are told by politicians and cops.
Steep
Decline at 'NYT' While 'WSJ' Gains. The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday.
Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400. The paper's daily circulation declined 3.8% to
1,077,256. … At The Washington Post, daily circulation decreased 3.5% to 673,180 and Sunday dropped 4.3% to
890,163. Meanwhile, daily circulation at The Wall Street Journal grew a fraction of a percent, up 0.3% to
2,069,463 copies.
Pressed for Cash. The
Minneapolis Star Tribune, reeling under a heavy debt load and plummeting advertising sales, is on the brink of bankruptcy,
The Post has learned. One of the nation's top dailies, "The Strib," as it is known to readers in the Twin Cities,
recently hired the Wall Street powerhouse Blackstone Group to restructure its balance sheet after failing to meet its
debt obligations, according to people familiar with the company.
Newspapers likely to be free
in the future: survey. Newspapers seeking to compete with the Internet are likely to
become free and place greater emphasis on comment and opinion in the future, a survey of the world's editors
showed on Tuesday [5/6/2008]. The report, conducted by Zogby International for the World Editors Forum
and Reuters, revealed that newspaper editors were still optimistic about the future of their publications but
believed they would have to adapt further for the digital age.
Now the bad
news. CNN's 11 p.m. show NewsNight summed up the theme: "Killer hurricanes, massive
earthquakes, monstrous fires: Are these unpredictable acts of nature signs the end of days
is near?" it asked on October 12. … "The end" may not be near, but the end of
television news ought to be, if such vague scare tactics are all it has left to offer. Unfortunately,
even though viewership is going down — deservedly so — the old mainstream liberal
media remains influential.
Katie Couric — Death throes of a
media dinosaur. It was recently announced that CBS will be losing millions on the Evening News
and that the lost revenue will be made up by draining dough from other parts of its vast antediluvian
broadcasting swamp. … But as costs balloon and viewers continue to disappear, how long can the network
continue to pour increasing amounts of money and all that jazz into a support network for a mashed potato
soft non-journalist like Ms. Couric?
Can CBS Be Saved? People abandoned
network news because network news abandoned them. Sure, the networks can try gimmicks to lure viewers
back — such as solo female anchors, letting viewers vote for the stories they want to see, and
hiring heartthrobs as national correspondents. But that's all just window-dressing.
Papers
Facing Worst Year for Ad Revenue. For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse.
This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising
serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.
Back to the top of this page
Back to the Media bias page
Jump over to The Prosecution of the Duke Lacrosse Team
Back to the Home page
|
|
