Mike Brown was forced out of FEMA. Blanco and Nagin still have their jobs, along with all the newsies who not just got it wrong, but made things worse in New Orleans. How’s that for accountability? Next time President Bush gives a press conference, maybe he should start by asking the reporters to repent of their mistakes.
Archive for category Media Criticism
News Or Rumors?
Oct 5
Failure
Sep 14
There are a lot of people who distrust markets, and who are pretty quick to invoke the concept of market failure. While I typically trust markets more than politicians, there are times when I do think markets fail. I’m not thinking the energy business because the biggest market failures I see are in the press and movie business.
Newspapers and network newscasts are shedding customers at a rate that a straight line extrapolation will put them out of business sooner rather than later. Their main asset, credibility, is eroding just as quickly. Bernard Goldberg was only partly right with his book “Bias” — as “Lousy” would have been a better description. The bias has become so bad mainly because the whole system is rotten. Rather than listen to the market, i.e their customers, the press is in full defense mode and consumers continue to leave. The message from the press has become the only thing wrong with the news media is that people are stupid, don’t like being told the truth, and just don’t appreciate the news. My local paper, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, is somewhere between awful and terrible – with a few notable exceptions. They got rid of their ombudsman a few years ago, someone I came to respect, and now you have to contact people direct with any problems. And that’s when you run into just how smug and arrogant journalists have become. We only get the paper for the coupons anymore – the overall news value is less than zero. But they were bought out by another chain and the look “updated” — while my older eyes appreciate the increase in readability and whitespace (which I wonder is just a way to cut down on content), the rest of the changes are generally poor and seem to be driven not by usability but some designers color palate – where the colors used to provide information (like on the weather page or in the financial section) now they are just accents with no information content. Two aphorisms come to mind – they just put lipstick on a pig, and you can’t polish a turd. But hey, why do the hard work of putting out a quality newspaper when you can do a redesign of the look instead. Fox News is killing the opposition because they put out a better (which doesn’t necessarily mean good) product.
And the movie business seems to be run not based on making money but on making films some good leftists think you ought to see and making films that only teenagers would watch to pay the bills. I like movies. I like going to movie theaters, I like renting them, I like buying really good ones because just owning a great movie makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. I am denied these simple pleasures because Hollywood insists on making crap unfit for human consumption. The hottest properties in Hollywood are either extensions of old work like LOTR and Star Wars or comic books. Comic Books! I happen to enjoy comic books, and still own quite a few (make me an offer and they can be yours) but I don’t want a steady diet of comic book based movies. I want epics, I want small movies, I want family movies, I want grown up movies, I want movies with intellegent dialogue, and I would really like to see comedies that don’t insult you. Is that really too much to ask for? Why did a movie like My Big Fat Greek Wedding have such difficulty in being made? Why are there so few movies like Sideways — aimed at the above 35 crowd? Why, after the huge success of The Passion of the Christ were there no copycats. C’mon, copycatting successful movies has been a staple of Hollywood since D.W Griffith. Here’s a movie that made like $400 million dollars and brought people to the theater who hadn’t been in years, and what’s the followup? Kingdom of Heaven. That thud was the sound of a turd hitting the screen, and by a great director too. How could they have botched Troy and Alexander so badly when the source material was so good? If you can make Les Miserables into a musical, how can you fail at making the Illiad into an epic?
Heres a case where there is a market clamoring for one thing, but suppliers not providing it, and leaving money on the table doing so. That to me is one huge market failure.
A follow on to Kevin’s prescription: some good news reported by Ralph Peters in the Aug 23 New York Post The Real Iraq News:
What should have made headlines? It would’ve been nice to see more attention devoted to the complexity and importance of drafting a new constitution for Iraq. But my nomination for the “Greatest Story Never Told” is a quieter one: Locked in a difficult war, the U.S. Army is exceeding its re-enlistment and first-time enlistment goals. Has anybody mentioned that to you?
[…]
Now, as the fiscal year nears an end, the Army’s numbers look great. Especially in combat units and Iraq, soldiers are re-enlisting at record levels. And you don’t hear a whisper about it from the “mainstream media.” Let’s look at the numbers, which offer a different picture of patriotism than the editorial pages do.
- Every one of the Army’s 10 divisions – its key combat organizations – has exceeded its re-enlistment goal for the year to date.
- What about first-time enlistment rates, since that was the issue last spring? The Army is running at 108 percent of its needs.
- The Army Reserve is a tougher sell, given that it takes men and women away from their families and careers on short notice. Well, Reserve recruitment stands at 102 percent of requirements.
- And then there’s the Army National Guard. We’ve been told for two years that the Guard was in free-fall. Really? Guard recruitment and retention comes out to 106 percent of its requirements as of June 30.
A Prescription For What Ails
Aug 23
I think Donald Sensing makes an excellent suggestion: form a joint information office to distribute information from the executive branch without the filter of the media.
On a similar note, I can’t help but think that a lot of anti-americanism in the rest of the world is supported by overwhelming presentation of negative info in the American media. Yes, there is plenty of what I see as plain anti-americanism as well, but I’m talking about the inherent bias of what is news or what makes a good story. Scientists spending years in researching, developing, testing, and then selling a breakthrough drug — seen any movies or TV shows about that? On the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of good movies about doctors and pharmaceutical companies conspiring to kill critics of flawed drugs — The Fugitive is a prime example.
What News Is
Aug 22
I’m not the only person unhappy with the coverage the Western press provides on the war on terror. As Army Capt. Sherman Powell told Today Show host Matt Lauer in in response to his question how troop morale could be so high, given the problems in Iraq:
“If I got my news from the newspapers also, I’d be pretty depressed as well. Those of us who’ve actually had a chance to get out and go on patrols and meet the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police and go on patrols with them, we are very satisfied with the way things are going here.”
What does the coverage consist of? Headlines about how many coalition force or Iraqi civilians were killed today or silence if none were killed, or recently how the effort to forge a new Iraqi constitution is about to unravel if there is kind of heated debate, posturing to make a later deal, or rhetorical point scoring at the sacrifice of progress, or silence if the effort is going smoothly. American operations are only mentioned in the context of (1) the casualties they bring to coalition soldiers and (2) how the enemy is so flexible and always adapting. Listening to news reports provides the inescapable conclusion that the only thing coalition forces are doing in Iraq is dying.
A large part of the problem is the divergent aims of terrorist groups in Iraq and the coalition forces – one is simply out to kill and terrorize and intimidate; the other is out to build a new civil society. The former is much easier to cover and so leads and dominates the coverage. The latter is much harder because it is so much more varied, much more widespread, and considered “normal” and thus not news. How can killing terrorists, finding and destroying arms caches, building infrastructure like power or sewage treatment plants, and holding elections all be a single aim? By and large for the press, if it can’t be covered simply, it isn’t covered at all.
So this morning my local paper’s WOT terror coverage consisted of an article about how 4 US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and how the things are getting worse there. Where is the story about how US and Afghan forces killed 105 terrorists in the same area that the 4 US soldiers were killed — I guess that somehow wasn’t news.
Eye Opener
Jul 11
Imagine my surprise to open my paper this morning and read this article about a leaked secret memo detailing plans to reduce troop levels in Iraq. Here we are fighting a war, American soldiers are dying, civilians are at risk, and newspapers are splashing war plans across their front pages. Tell me again how the press should have an absolute right to protect sources. Tell me again that the press is always looking out for my best interests.
Back In The USA
Jun 16
Many moons ago when I wore a younger man’s clothes I spent three months in Pakistan. I didn’t know it when I arrived at the airport to leave, but I didn’t have permission to leave the country. After I had gone through customs, checked in with Air France (yes, Air France, and I’d fly them again in a heartbeat), I was stopped at the security check, my luggage removed from the plane, and I was told I couldn’t leave the country without a travel permit. As an American, I hadn’t a clue that a country would stop a traveller from leaving. A criminal, yes. Someone who had spent three months in country without incident, no. The next day I and several co-travellers went to the police station and in a scene from Dickens (imagine very old men in uniforms surrounded by massive amount of paperwork) we were issued Travel Papers and I was able to leave the country (on Air France, who did right by me).
Well.
I’m glad to see that someone else will be now be able to leave Pakistan – Mukhtar Mai, the woman whose gang rape was ordered by a tribal council to punish her family for her brother’s alleged indescretion. For reasons best known to the Pakistani government, she wasn’t allowed to leave the country until the prime minister of Pakistan himself took her name off the do not leave the country list yesterday.
But while her story ends there for now, my tale continues on.
I look at the AP version at the KC Star — it reads like the woman’s appeal moved the PM. Ditto for The Independent. I look at ABC News and it reads like international pressure moved the PM. The Indian Express notes that it was pressure from “key ally” United States that did the trick. Finally the WaPo version cites a single factor: “a stern protest by the Bush administration”. Australia’s News.com.au isn’t content just to cite some amorphous pressure, they have the best detail on who said what stern protests. The NYT, God love them, can’t bring itself to mention the word Bush in a positive light, so it has a “pressure from Washington” formulation. Could be the state, could be congress, could be George, who knows for sure. Reuters, Reuters makes it clear just who applied the pressure and how it was applied.
But the best coverage was at Voice of America, which supplied all the details, and even covered the NYT’s prior coverage. In head to head coverage, the VOA is consistantly one of the best for news coverage.
Google News – it’s how you can compare a bunch of different versions of a story in a hurry.
Same Old Story
Jun 16
Omar discovers a well known story — he’s courted by the press, they hang on his every word, and then boom he’s dropped like last weeks newspaper when he doesn’t tell them what they want to hear. Just ask David Gelertner.
You might even think that re-opening of Baghdad Stadium and a crowd of thousands enjoying soccer without mishap would be news, but you’d be wrong according to news organizations.
The Reese’s Solution
Jun 14
For reasons that escape me, the news media seems to think that the acquital of Michael Jackson on child molestation charges is REALLY BIG NEWS, of the caliber only slightly below THE END OF THE WORLD. Personally, I couldn’t even muster a yawn.
They also seem to think that interrogaters playing Christine Aguilera to a mass murderer wanna be at loud volumes at all hours of the day is also REALLY BIG NEWS. I have to wonder if they’ve ever lived in a college dorm. I don’t to make light of the plight of prisoners at Gitmo, but after reading the EXCLUSIVE article in Time I have to wonder how anybody can survive three years in a frat house. Do the faculty know what goes on there? George W. Bush has probably already been through worse during his time in college.
Now that Michael Jackson isn’t going to be sharing his bed with boys anymore, and his career is further in the toilet than a Quran has ever been, and the use of Christine Aguilaria is now out of the question, how about the government hires Michael to conduct interrogations at Gitmo? It would be a perfect fit and let Michael do something productive again. He can be good cop and he could share his bed with men. Just a thought.
Light Of Day
Jun 12
I wrote a letter to the editor at my local paper, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, last week about how I thought they and the rest of the media were handling the Quran “desecration” issue. I was surprised when it didn’t run, but then they whole thing seems to have sunk without a trace from their pages. But since I do have my own virtual printing press, I’m running it here:
The headline read “White House plays down report of Quran desecration by guard” but it should have read, “Media plays up American Quran mishandling”. The media seems to show little interest in informing the public but plenty of interest in settling a score with the White House which called Newsweek out on inaccurate reporting. So we went from a report of a guard flushing a Quran down a toilet to a guard deliberately kicking a Quran and a bare mention that the only Quran in a toilet was placed there by a detainee. Detainees abused Qurans three times as often as guards. Some scandal, especially in light of real, documented abuses of detainees at the hands of US soldiers, and the routine murder of captives at the hands al Qaida.
What puzzles me is the lack of interest in the media that the US government is providing a religious book to prisoners and issuing instructions affirming the holiness of the Quran. I wonder, do they provide Bibles, or Bhagavad-Gitas, or even copies of Dianetics on request? If my local school district or prison started passing out Bibles and issuing guidelines on the proper handling of the Bible based on the idea that it is the one true scripture of God, wouldn’t there be a huge uproar? Hindus would be pleased with the size of the cow that a certain segment of American society would have over that. But the media is focused with laser like intensity (read the transcripts at www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/) on guards mishandling Qurans and the meta-questions that raises. No wonder people no longer trust the media.
