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Thoughts on News
Jan. 4th, 2006 10:27 amHow many of y'all watch the Daily Show? Have you seen those wonderful montages - he runs them as often as he can - of talking heads on the news attempting to break stories before they know diddly squat? "We think..." "It's believed..." "I don't know yet..." "We don't know yet..." "Unsubstantiated..." "We don't know..."
The rush to be the first on the block has led most of the news to be the first to babble meaninglessly while they wait for actual news to happen.
Been thinking a lot about this today, and the miner story. The WaPo, which I alternately love and hate, was IMO pretty darn responsible today. The main headline, as it ought to be in these parts, was on Abramoff, with another headline to the side saying "One Body is Found in W. VA Coal Mine - Officials Hold Out Hope for 12 Others Despite Toxic Gas." It's not a cheerful headline, but it's an accurate one. We have one corpse, and we hope to find the others alive but the odds kinda suck.
Then I get to my breakfast cafe to see the happy-happy-joy-joy headline on USA Today - MINERS FOUND ALIVE! I swear to y'all, I read that and thought "I'm not believing this. It's too Disney."
And what do I find out as the day goes on? A heck of a lot of papers rushed to press with the chipper cheerful feel-good story... which is cruelly false. Reality: One living person, 12 bodies. A community crushed.
I wonder how many papers will print retractions, much less explanations, tomorrow. And moreover, I wonder, in this balkanized world where people watch the news they *want* to see and ignore the other outlets as liars, how many people will actually believe the depressing truth when it is presented to them.
And then I wonder how Fox News will spin things so that they will sound like they're the only ones who told the truth - even though I think "the truth" in this case is that the disregard of Big Business for basic safety meant the unnecessary deaths of almost a dozen people. That's not the sort of thing they like to report.
ETA: Edited because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stratfordbabe has valid points. And also, I was wrong about Fox. A little bit ago they talked about "what is being called a severe miscommunication" (!!) and then showed footage of the families cheering and laughing in relief as the false news spread.
Watching that, knowing what we know now, was beyond creepy. I have no idea who in Fox thought that was illumiating or entertaining.
The rush to be the first on the block has led most of the news to be the first to babble meaninglessly while they wait for actual news to happen.
Been thinking a lot about this today, and the miner story. The WaPo, which I alternately love and hate, was IMO pretty darn responsible today. The main headline, as it ought to be in these parts, was on Abramoff, with another headline to the side saying "One Body is Found in W. VA Coal Mine - Officials Hold Out Hope for 12 Others Despite Toxic Gas." It's not a cheerful headline, but it's an accurate one. We have one corpse, and we hope to find the others alive but the odds kinda suck.
Then I get to my breakfast cafe to see the happy-happy-joy-joy headline on USA Today - MINERS FOUND ALIVE! I swear to y'all, I read that and thought "I'm not believing this. It's too Disney."
And what do I find out as the day goes on? A heck of a lot of papers rushed to press with the chipper cheerful feel-good story... which is cruelly false. Reality: One living person, 12 bodies. A community crushed.
I wonder how many papers will print retractions, much less explanations, tomorrow. And moreover, I wonder, in this balkanized world where people watch the news they *want* to see and ignore the other outlets as liars, how many people will actually believe the depressing truth when it is presented to them.
And then I wonder how Fox News will spin things so that they will sound like they're the only ones who told the truth - even though I think "the truth" in this case is that the disregard of Big Business for basic safety meant the unnecessary deaths of almost a dozen people. That's not the sort of thing they like to report.
ETA: Edited because
stratfordbabe has valid points. And also, I was wrong about Fox. A little bit ago they talked about "what is being called a severe miscommunication" (!!) and then showed footage of the families cheering and laughing in relief as the false news spread.Watching that, knowing what we know now, was beyond creepy. I have no idea who in Fox thought that was illumiating or entertaining.
