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Tragedy, Media and Marketing
Magazine and newspaper critics -- like Liebling, Mencken and I.F. Stone -- once wrote bitingly and insightfully about the greed, hypocrisy and warped values of the people who ran conventional news organizations, and about how those traits affected media coverage. This criticism gave us some context with which to grasp and comprehend what we were reading and seeing. But as media became increasingly corporatized in the 80s and 90s, such critics vanished. Media criticism turned into celebrity journalism, with a growing focus on media moguls and TV superstars. Even greedy capitalists like Bill Gates were fawned over by the toughest reporters and critics, when they should have been paying more attention to his business practices.
Every now and then, however, an old and new media issue pops up. It's disingenuous for media gasbags to wonder why the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart from Salt Lake City gets tides of media hype while the kidnapping of 7-year-old Alexis Patterson from Milwaukee gets so little. We know why. The answer has been the same for years now, and only gets more clear with each corporate acquisition of a media property: modern media is about making money, and that depends entirely on selecting stories that entertain, titillate, blow up or confront.
Last week, CNN devoted a whole program to the mysterious process by which some tragedies -- the Death of Di to name one -- get staggering amounts of media coverage, while others -- like Mother Teresa's death the same week -- merit relatively little. CNN's high-minded panelists debated whether racism was the issue: Smart is a rich white kid, Alexis Patterson is poor and black. Is there a double standard? Others suggested Smart's parents were understandably working to promote media coverage, to involve more people in searching for their daughter. But this dichotomous coverage is familiar to Net veterans. Kevin Mitnick got as much media coverage in our time as Al Capone, even though he never killed anybody. Hacking gets vastly more media attention than assault or robbery, cyber-porn more than the newsstand kind. Media are always selective about what makes them hysterical.
It was striking to realize that none of CNN's panelists came close to the simple truth: media are market-driven, not idea-substance-or-content driven. Even the once-staid weekly newsmagazines are as likely as not to have movie stars on their covers, despite the number of important stories worthy of coverage. Cable channels, newspapers and newsmagazines cater to wealthy people -- no matter what color -- because those are the consumers advertisers want to reach. To some degree, this has always been true. But as more media have been taken over by massive corporations like AOL Time-Warner, Disney and General Electric, the process has vastly accelerated. News gets marketed just like cereal. Numbers rule. Ratings shape not only news coverage, but our very perceptions of the news. Such companies don't decide not to cover Alexis Patterson because she's poor and black. Profoundly pragmatic and opportunistic, they'd be happy to exploit blacks as well as whites, if the demographics worked. They don't cover Alexis Patterson's abduction because poor viewers in Milwaukee or elsewhere have nothing to do with ratings, ad revenue or profit margins. Blonde kids from wealthy families in Salt Lake City do.
Even so-called serious media like the New York Times and Washington Post are market-driven, focused increasingly on high-end consumer products spawned by digital technology, and on entertainment and controversy. The Times runs several weekly sections brazenly aimed at affluent second home buyers, wine connoisseurs and other high-end consumers. Stories about redecorating million-dollar cottages don't appear because they're newsworthy, but because they draw readers with money, thus advertisers with revenue.
The Elizabeth Smarts of the world will always trump the Alexis Pattersons. Modern media online or off, aren't steered by editors and producers making moral and creative judgments, but by business conglomerates, lawyers, analysts and market researchers. Their sole imperative: generate controversy (a la Monica Lewinsky), select stories that draw the most desirable readers and generate the greatest profits. This principle is evident in media coverage of computing and software as well, and has been for years. Stories about the Net invariably center on marketing -- what will make the most money, or what might be of interest to frightened and confused parents, rather than what is significant. Look how much coverage child pornography online gets, and how little coverage there is of truly revolutionary techno-stories, from gene mapping to AI. And most Americans have never even heard of open source, let alone had the chance to consider it's many implications. Intellectual property and copyright laws have been re-written, thanks to digital technology, yet these stories get sporadic and incomplete coverage.
Media debates about story judgment and ethics are often this hypocritical and disingenuous, mostly because critics and panelists aren't really free to speak the truth -- moral media died decades ago. From Princess Di to terrorism to kidnapping, stories grow in a hyper-information environment, one which promotes argument and hysteria and, increasingly, filters out the lives of poor, ordinary, or non-marketable people. Modern media takes stories and filters them through an increasingly sophisticated marketing machine.Online, blogs and small sites are freer than conventional journalists to set a broader agenda, but their audiences remain small and fragmented.
Thus, there's no mystery about why Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping gets so much more attention than that of other kids. The only mystery is how long it will take the media -- and more importantly, the public -- to understand and acknowledge the reality of their own new, intensely corporate, value system.
Companies are out to make money!!
*Gasp*
The sky is falling!
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Hacking gets almost no coverage in the mainstream media outside of the 8 second blurb about some devastating email virus every now and then.
The Mitnick story makes no ripples when two airplanes crash into each other over Germany and American bombs mistakenly take out a wedding party instead of our bearded foes.
The news and hype around hackers that you speak of is only visible in dark reaches of the Net like ZDNet and Slashdot. CNN, MSNBC, and the other Major internet news outlets relegate these stories to the Technology page where they rightly belong.
I have been pwned because my
Do you live in Milwaukee? Have you ever been to Milwaukee? Do you realize that for the past two months (or however long she's been missing) it's been on the news almost every day in Milwaukee? There are flyers in most local businesses with her picture. There are tons of things in the paper.
I live in Mexico. I have never heard before about the Alexis Patterson kidnapping. Yet when I watch CNN, there's a lot of stories about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. And I have to (somewhat painfully) agree with Jon Katz about this one.
The Big Media tends to take one story and latch on to it, and squeeze it for all the money it can get. It's either that, or the Smarts have been paying afwully huge amounts of money to buy airtime in several media channels and newspapers and such.
It's not like the O.J. murder trial or the Blake murder trial. They're famous people, so more people know them and want to know what's going on with those cases. In the Smart case, they're taking someone unknown and making her famous. And it's not "the people" deciding it. It's the studio execs. It's Ted Turner. It's people with a desire to earn more money through selling advertisement to more viewers.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Couple of days back US warplanes dropped a bomb on a marriage party in Afghanistan killing over 50. And there hasnt been more than a couple of columns in the western media about the whole story. Is it because their lives are not important as the ones who perished on 9/11. If its confirmed that US fscked up by dropping the bomb, would the 40 men,women and children get any justice as well ?
Also recently Salon had an article on US Military Contractors buying and selling under age girls in troubled areas in Europe (Bosnia etc.). Would any western news firm pick up this story and let the world know that the Army isnt full of people who would lay down their lives in the blink of an eye for freedom and against oppression ? In this post 9/11 world, I would suprised if that news story ever got out. MSNBC ran a story on this a few weeks back, but didnt touch on the Military Contractors aspect. And then we wonder why everyone hates US ?
Being rich, being powerful, being able to garner the most media coverage seems to be the only way now to live.
Around 1800 people lost their livelihood because of some assholes in Worldcom. Would CNN/MSNBC etc. care a fsck about those people. Nope, we linger upon the luxurious indulgences of the CEOS and CFOs, but doesnt care jackshit about the ordinary guy who got laidoff and now has to find a job to support his family.
Companies screw each other and the public over and over everyday. I just heard a story of the root cause of all this being blamed on Clinton and Ben&Jerry. The reason being, Clinton and his Govt mandating that a CEOs base salary should never be over 1 million, but doesnt impose any ceiling on the amount of stock he could receive. Which leads to cooking the books and then laying of hundreds of people because the company cant survive.
Its a shitty world out there folks. And its not getting better day by day.
Rapid Nirvana
I'd never even heard of her until today. So go figure. I watch the local news, NBC, CNN and CNBC with a smattering of other news channels. Maybe in Milwaukee you're hearing everything about it, but I had not. But, I have certainly heard a lot about the other little girl. Oh, and let's not forget Jon Bennet Ramsey. She was constantly on the news even though she was found dead in the home. You still hear about it.
So you tell me.
So Jon, your conclusion that everyone is too afraid to say why the Elisabeth Smart case is probably true. But it has nothing to do with media conglomerates, wealthy people, or race (which you correctly discarded). It has to do with sex. What you were afraid to say is that the pictures of this little girl were perfect to entice audiences in a sex crime story. Sex sells, especially sex with little girls. And especially when there's violence involved. This is America, and sure there is corporate greed involved, but its method of exploiting the story is being glossed over.
I think I'll stop here.
Not to be off-topic - and let me stress that I'm not a Katz basher - but I got pretty much sick of this article right away. Why? Lets say I stopped reading right about here:
"Even greedy capitalists like Bill Gates..."
It seems that capitalism is wrong in america these days. Nobody is preaching socialism, but everybody is dissing capitalism. Yes, Bill Gates is a capitalist. But come to think of it, so am I. And so are almost all Americans. The real problem with Bill Gates is not that he's a capitalist, and not that he controls a monopoly (let me remind you that having a monopoly is not illegal), but that he illegaly uses his monopoly.
Just because Bill Gates was successful doesn't make him an eeeeevil greedy capitalist. Mind you, he's given billions to charities.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Well, I live outside Milwaukee and this media junkie hasn't heard word one about Ms. Patterson's kidnapping. I also live outside Salt Lake and the airwaves are filled with Ms. Smart's story. What Katz says in this case is spot on.
I wish people such as yourself would stop and think before posting a knee-jerk anti-Katz response. Sometimes he does say stuff that's worthwhile and this is one of those times.
That is all.
The same commentary showed up in the Milwaukee Journal in early June. (note, not from Milwaukee, I think an Elizabeth Smart article actually had the link, but I can't find it)
The Washington Post wrote about ittwo weeks ago.
This isn't really insightful. It's doesn't really have a /. slant to it, or any new information - quite a few people have said it before. A Google search for alexis patterson media coverage pretty much tells all. I'm sure you could get more by playing with the search terms.
I'm in New York City. Milwaukee is far far away, as is Salt Lake City. I never heard of Alexis, I never saw Alexis on the news. The first time I heard of Alexis was... Well... Now.
Truth is, I watched each news broadcast about Elizabeth Smart with two conflicting emotions. "God, that's horrible. Poor little girl." And "Wait a minute. She can't possibly be the only kid who has been kidnapped since the last kidnapping news story I saw. Why the heck is she getting so much media coverage...?" Which was answered shortly after that. "Oh. She's overprivilidged".
It's no news that kids with money are more important than those without. It's no news that kids from affluent families are more likely to get media time, if only because the parents know how to publicize things.
You cannot say that Alexis has gotten nearly as much coverage as Smart. I mean.. C'mon. Barely a day passes without Smart's picture being on *Something*. I hear her name mentioned more than I hear about Israel, more than I hear about terrorist threats, more than I hear about things that happened in the city I'm living in.
American media is insane.
-Sara
1) Mainstream media is all about the making money.
2) Mainstream America has an attention span of 20 seconds.
3) A vacuum of media critics.
I pretty much agree with the above, though recently you see the right and left sides of the media attacking/criticising each other. Limbaugh and Fox News vs. CNN and the Networks ("Let's get ready to ruuuuuummmmmmble!"), but this is even probably more suited for marketing rather than fair criticism. The fairest critic I've found, even though he is a conservative, is Sean Hannity. Obviously there are others that I just don't know about.
I think that the first two points really emphasize why web news is popular. For anything in depth you have to go someplace, while maybe biased, that at least doesn't leave out large chunks of the story and the background of the story. This depth is not sexy (ad friendly) nor quick to read and understand (shiny toy).
I can't stand TV news anymore; "3 dead in sex farm explosion", "look at all the pretty people", sports, weather, "feel good story about Foo-Foo the super bunny". Newspapers aren't much better. There are more stories and they are longer, but some of them read like a 14 year old wrote it.
For once Katz is pretty well on target, but could use some word chopping. More is not always neccesarily better.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
If there are some good independent media outlets out there, the ones that don't get much press, why don't you write a story about them? It's nice and easy to point out the fact that multi-national exist to make the most money possible and the effects of that ethos of media coverage are deplorable. That much is obvious. But give us a hint on where to focus our attention to alleviate the problem. Tell us what is being done to combat the problem, because there are people out there fighting it. Find 'em and point 'em out. The rest of use have real work to do.
+&x
Moral media isn't dead. You just have to look harder for it.
Now that the Sept 11th jingoism has died down and it's starting to be a non-terminal offence to express discontent versus the powers that be, you're starting to see the creepings of independent thought show up even in CNN. Up here in Canada, CTV's been doing it for a while. But even then there's a huge under-reporting of stories that would knock the comfort zone of the average person.
The basic problem is this -- any media outlet is a slave to the mandate of its publisher. This isn't really new, it's as old as newspapers themselves (it used to be that if you wanted to be a politician it was a shrewd move to found your own newspaper). So, if you've got nothing but biased media out there, the only way to really inform yourself is to (a) check up on all the biases and try to develop your own conclusions from them, and (b) realize that there's no substitute for actually being at the scene of the event, or at the very least talking to someone who is.
People who critique the media as having a bias often make the mistake of trying to sound like it's forced upon them, when really, you can choose to go out and find different information from a different source. Some options include:
ZNet
The Guardian
The Independent
Le Monde Diplomatique (English version here)
Tom Tommorow
It also helps in times of conflict to go to the media outlets or websites of your political enemies to see what they're saying. It's amazing how they often take as gospel a premise that is completely different from your own. It's also amazing how often the exact same coercive techniques are used by both sides. Makes you wonder if there are average citizens over there are pissed off at their media as much as some of us are at ours.
By the way, I know I went off on a bit of a tangent, but if you click on any of the links above you'll see minimal coverage of the Elizabeth Smart case. There might be a story in there at some point to tell everyone how it all turns out, but nothing like the usual CNN sensationalism. The point is, if you don't like your media, don't go back to it -- go elsewhere. It's not like we have battered wife syndrome or something.
(or maybe we do???)
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I know that you are trying to offer a bit of insight, but please create original work or give writing creit where due. A simple search returns an interesting link. I believe this was originally done by John Stossel and his orignal title can be found here.
From the site""Pandering to Fear: The Media's Crisis Mentality" Every day newspapers and television warns us of new, unsuspected dangers in our complex modern world--from Alar and asbestos to cyclamates to the Audi 5000 and the Suzuki Samurai. With the world apparently getting more dangerous all the time, we have to wonder how life expectancy keeps on growing. ABC's John Stossel will discuss what the real risks in modern life are, why the media seem to hype unrealistic fears, and why readers and viewers fall for it. "
Thank you for your time. I appreciate the effort, but I appreciate and value the efforts of the original authors even more. Lest we forget Doris Kearns Goodwin and her misdeeds.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Teach logic, critical thinking and statistical reasoning in schools. Teach about traditional propaganda techniques and the ways that biased sources distort truth -- not only by outright lies or mere fudging, but by the selection or omission of information. In other words, lead them to rational, analytical modes of thinking rather than the mere absorbtion of emotionally manipulative tripe that gets served as "news" these days, especially on TV.
Oh, and support media watchdogs like Spinsanity and their ilk -- groups that care about correctness, rather than transparently carrying out political vendettas.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Jon has his head completely up his keester if he thinks Mencken was somehow a non-biased, non-sensationalistic journalist. Quite the opposite; it was his stances and deft, witty articulation of them based on fact as well as innuendo that made him a great journalist. Hell, it was the age of yellow journalism. Mencken, Winchell et al were always looking for any story that could make the most people plunk down a nickel and pick up a paper.
Take the Scopes trial alone. Mencken, goes down to the south and turns a stupid little rigged case into a media feeding frenzy, makes it a battle between the theory of evolution and the forces of ignorance, when it was really nothing much to get jazzed about. Like the Smart kidnapping business the story was in the telling, not the facts themselves.
Thus it has always been, thus it always shall be, and thank God for it. The news needs readers to survive and to get readers, like it or not, you have to entertain them in one way or another.
It's an old saw, but if you don't like what's out there, don't watch. Turn off CNN & pick up the papers of your choice, which have overall had relatively little Smart coverage. If CNN lost even just 10% of its audience during times it was covering this thing it'd drop it like a bad habit -- it's the fact that the opposite occurs that keeps it on the air and that's our fault, not CNN's. It's your eyes that create the market, and advertisers are paying because YOU are watching & reading. That, Jon, is a good thing, not a bad thing, because it makes the responsibility for what's on the air ours, not AOL/Time Warner's. Stop paying attention to the crap and it'll die.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
"Media debates about story judgment and ethics are often this hypocritical and disingenuous, mostly because critics and panelists aren't really free to speak the truth -- moral media died decades ago"
Personally, I find it hilarious when people talk about the 'liberal left-wing' media. The primary news sources for 99.9% of Americans are owned by a scant handful of interests. Hell, one company now owns over three quarters of all the radio stations in the US! And these owners have a number of traits in common: f$cking wealthy, believe in the status quo (hey, they got where they are within the system ... so don't see any need to change it), and, most disturbing, are taking more and more of an active interest in leaning on (or dumping) reporters who dare to question things.
Politics is still fair game. It's almost entirely rhetoric, the two parties almost always work out a compromise ... and, just like the media owners, virtually all politicos come from f$cking wealthy parents (the gentleman in the White House as an example). And both parties are far, far to the right of the average American as a consequence.
OTOH, any reporter who tried to give Nader serious coverage ran into some real problems ... geez, we had reporters threatened here in the middle of nowhere (aka Des Moines (although, to be fair, they consider themselves the moral starting point of the Republicans))
For a really scary example, take those two 'reporters' who were captured in Iraq. Due to travel, got to see the stories both in Canada and the US. The Canadian news (government station) talked about their easily established links to the CIA and Military Intelligence, and showed photos of the 'road' where they crossed the border ... deep trench, rolls of barbed wire on both sides, and signs (in multiple languages, including English) saying 'Don't cross, Iraqi border'. On the US side, nothing. Well, they were 'innocent victims' who 'accidentally' wandered into Iraq. The media in the US has become self-censoring, the joy of any abusive government.
And think about the coverage anyone who questions the current 'War on Terrorism' gets ... either little or none, or is savagely attacked for being unpatriotic.
I live in Madison, which is about 60 miles from Milwaukee. While I have heard of Alexis from our local AM radio morning guy, I've not seen it on the daily local news, newspaper, etc.
Indeed, I had heard of the SLC chick days if not a week or so before I had heard of Alexis. Hell, I know NOTHING about Alexis other than it's "some girl missing" but I DO know that the SLC chick was hunting down some random guy that drove a few thousand miles on his car, from watching CNN two days a week for a half hour at home during lunch.
IMHO, neither should be more than a blurb in the news. Yes it's a tragedy, but didnt some planes just crash in to each other? Didnt some pilots just try to fly a plane drunk?
It's unfortunate that once a story like this breaks, they MUST continue to keep it in the press all of the time because the housewives of the world need to find out whats happening to their new weekly obsession.
Well our soothing reprieve is over. Katz was silent from Jun 04, '02 12:15 PM to Jul 02, '02 01:15 PM. Nearly a month. Anyone care to hypothesize what he may have been doing during that time?
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
So many people are just ripping into him because he's Jon Katz, that they are missing the point. You are here, reading slashdot because of the media issues he points out. By reading slashdot you are already agreeing with him. Why arent you reading CNN.com right now? Because if it's not on slashdot, then we don't need to know. If Jon Katz can be accused of anything, it's that he's preaching to the choir. It's a nice article nonetheless. He raises some great points that have been bothering me lately. Poor little rich girl . . .
There's no excuse for being bamboozled by the mainstream media in 2002. Who cares if CNN focuses on sensationalistic stories? There are a million other choices to get your news from. If you don't like media companies with corporate sponsors, read independent news websites instead. If you like boring news that doesn't cater to the clamjamfry, listen to NPR.
t ml
Reason Magazine has a good editorial on media mergers:
http://reason.com/0004/ed.ng.mergers.sh
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
It's funny, I was thinking about this subject during my morning quality reading time (john) - there was an article about a U Illinois media prof. who complains about how media is run as big-business and that's inherently opposed to the spirit of the first ammendment. He cited the lack of dailys in NYC (down from 9 in the 1940's) and the inability of any small publisher (think Zine) to reach a wide audience.
I mean, first off, NY has at 2 free weeklies, the post and the times (radically different styles) and that new conservative-funded rag (I forget the name) so there are 5 papers running there. Considering the rise of TV and general displacement of print media down to 5 from 9 isn't so bad.
Secondly, and more importantly, it's kind of blaming the messenger isn't it? I mean, other news is available to us, obviously, even if it's not spoon-fed from the checkout line. If people aren't reading/watching it, it's because they don't want to. I blame the quality, the timber if you will, of the Average American much more than I do the Media Giants. If you think they're all brainwashed by Murdoch then you're taking away free choice and postulating a rat-in-the-maze/pavlovian world (which I sort-of don't think is how things really are). If you accept that we have choice, and you can't deny the choice exists, then we must conclude that people WANT to read about rich white mormon girls. WHY don't Zines thrive? WHY don't people look to indymedia.org or whatever for their news? Because they simply don't want to.
I know there are other factors, but the fact that Americans (in particular) don't fit in to the image we'd like them to (of free-thinking, compassionate, caring folks who want to know the Truth) we can't say it's Media's fault. It's our fault. Americans.
closed minded is as closed minded does
In this country, you ARE innocent until proven guilty. Once acquitted, as far as the public and government are concerned, you're innocent.
But it's not their fault.
It's our fault. They're in the business to make money. They do that by selling advertising. And the prices they get for selling advertising are determined by how many people are watching.
If we didn't watch, they wouldn't feed us this garbage. All they're doing is feeding us what we want. They're giving us loads and loads of the stuff we wanna see. We apparently LIKE to watch about sex scandals, missing wealthy attractive children, and celebrity deaths. Because they boost the ratings. And ratings mean money for the news sources.
If we want to change the media, it has to start with US. Don't like it? Don't WATCH it. Turn it off. If enough people do it, the ratings will suffer. The media will adapt, and feed us what we DO watch. Only when we reward responsible journalism, by watching it, will we get more of it.
Just one of the Problems
One of the current problems with the media that it's turned into one big oligopoly and it's sleeping with the FCC so it can retain its status.
All media companies need a conduit to deliver thier content to viewers/users, whether it's the airwaves (TV/Radio), Cable, and now Internet (via Telephone for most users).
The FCC controls ALL of these conduits (With the exception of some private networks).
One Solution
1. Regulate/deregulate the FCC's control so that the costs of running a TV channel, radio station is virtually nothing, thus introducing competition.
2. Regulate/deregulate the Baby Bell's exclusive control over the telephone infrastructure to facilitate the deployment of broadband technologies. Maybe seperate service from infrastructure.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I'd just like to point out that "greedy capitalist" Bill Gates runs a company which so far has not been found to have tiddled its books, unlike so many other corporations.
Having money and running a large company does not automatically make one a greedy, immoral, evil human being.
However it does seem to automatically make it ok for juvenile Leftists like Mr. Katz to say such things.
Listen up Katz, you doofus. Capitalism is not an evil plot, it is the normal, natural way that human beings interact. Go back in history past the modern all-pervasive state and what you find everywhere in the world is the free market. Participation in the free market is normal and natural, and that one person has more money than another is also normal and natural.
So it is possible that Mr. Gates may be greedy, and it is possible that he may be a bad person. But that he is a Capitalist is not the reason for such character flaws.
Who's a worse person, somebody who provides a product like Gates, or somebody who makes a living calling other people names?
It is also interesting that Jon says that Alexis isn't front-page news because "poor viewers in Milwaukee or elsewhere have nothing to do with ratings." Does he honestly believe that Salt Lake City has anything to do with national ratings? It is a small, small market when compared to L.A., New York, Austin, Seattle, or a few dozen other cities in the U.S.
I agree that ratings have a definite effect on TV programming and news broadcasts. It is also true that there are some unscrupulous news directors out there that only care about dollar signs. But it is a gross generality to apply that label to the news media in general.
I'm constantly amazed when I travel to foreign countries and find that real news and real journalism can be genuinely profitable. Why do we settle as a nation for magazines like "Time" when Mother Jones sits quietly on the shelf? Why do serious newsmagazines need to shlock around the latest Julia Roberts rumors to sell copies?
This is as much about culture as it is about media. I have nothing against infotainment... I read Slashdot, after all. But that isn't the same thing as information. Yet any of the myriad of people who pick up, say, the Boston Herald every day think that they are getting their daily dose of vitamin I... They don't make the conscious realization that it is just a copy of People on cheap paper. If Americans had any cultural context and the desire to understand rather than be told they would have snapped up copies of any paper covering the assassination lists Presidente Fox is holding and the overhaul of the Russian criminal justice system set to take effect this week. But we don't, so we don't.
There is nothing wrong with the periodicals mentioned in this piece... they just need to be seen in their proper light. Yelling at the previously core newssources just because they chose to sell avon instead of news won't solve the problem. Moving enmasse to reliable news sources will.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
...under the sun.