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What's Wrong With the TV News
MBCook writes "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."
I'll sum it up in one name.
Paris Nicole Spears
Seriously, I really don't give a fuck. If I did I would purchase tabloids. How about some substantive reporting on actual world events? Or if you still have time to fill, some factual information on the presidential candidates. Like, maybe some stories on what they actually believe and have a record of voting for, so the public will be more informed and can make better decisions. Not stories analyzing who is ahead by 3% in the latest poll in what states or who has the best chance of winning. That only breeds bandwagoning subject to the control of the media. This is of course exactly what they want though, which is why we will continue to see no stories with real factual content, and simply sound bites.
The internet is much better as a news vehicle because I can actually find stories with real content which complexly explore the issues. Apparently the news networks think that no one's attention span is greater than 1 minute and 30 seconds, so they mandate that no stories should be covered in depth. Occasionally there are multi-hour specials on certain things, but apart from that, there is rarely regular substantive coverage of important goings on.
...is becoming more and more like Slashdot?
Misleading Headlines, Irrelevant Stories, Flamebaiting Comments: you heard it here first!
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
...Kurt Cobain?
You can read more in one hour, than a newscaster can speak in one hour intelligibly.
So news is all soundbites.
The guys making decisions are few, and they are all political animals. Even the more liberal ones like Jon Stewart use their airtime to make political points. Television has become prescriptive, a way for the rich and powerful to tell us what to think. It's more noticeable in the U.S., I think, because both major parties have converging interests when it comes to issues like Al Qaeda, Iraq, etc. Big network TV in the U.S. is bordering on propaganda. I can recall one attempt by the Canadian Conservative government to play along, banning images of Canadian military caskets from the media. Thankfully there was a public outcry, and the decision was soon reversed. Unlike the Republican government, the Conservatives have a minority government and must make concessions to the Opposition on a regular basis. This is not a problem in the U.S., and I don't expect that we'll see a more empathetic viewpoint on major network television before Bush is out of office.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
People should call into Stewart to suggest that he come back on the air and does a straight news show until the writers return.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I don't care if Nicole Ritchie had a loose bowel movement today. Or any of that "believe and achieve" bullshit. News is news. If I wanted this brand of news, I would turn on MTV.
For quite a few years now, the only place I have gone for objective reporting on real American news is the BBC and Reuters. So I suppose the world hasn't gone mad. Only American media has.
The game.
Did you hear Kurt Cobain was on the TV? ...and on the carpet, the walls, the furniture...
This is a very good article. However, I wonder if the reporters were granted more freedom on reported news content if viewership and awareness would actually change. Over the past 10 to 15 years the choices on how and when news content can be viewed has changed dramatically. I remember watching the news each evening with my Dad when I was younger. Now I just hop on the internet and find the headlines that catch my attention, I rarely watch the evening news on TV anymore. Yet the internet has about the same quality of reporting on most stories, not very well written or very in-depth. But I have the freedom to view them at anytime. Anyway, Hockenberry sums it up; producers will choose content they believe will get them the most viewers, it's all about rating and money.
Iraq billions
Don't watch the news anymore. I've only watched about 2 hrs of tv per week for the last 6 years. All of a sudden, when somebody brings up stupid tabloid pap, my eyes glaze over and I simply reply "Oh, I don't watch TV. Havn't heard of that." Next conversation please!
What's wrong with TV news? It receives Nielsen Ratings. That means they are not treated as informational, but rather as entertainment and require audience share (in the eyes of those who watch the "bottom line").
And I'm not the only one who thinks this. There are papers about this very subject.
Jory
We are once again experiencing the century-old practice of Yellow Journalism. In fact, I would say that media's role in how the Spanish-American War was sold to the public is disturbingly parallel to that of the invasion of Iraq, just with Karl Rove at the helm instead of William Randolph Hearst. What we think is this new medium of "infotainment" is simply an update of sensationalism.
Unfortunately, history and civics education in the US are so atrocious that I would not expect many Americans to remember any of this, making us doomed to repeat mistakes from a hundred years ago.
the comments are fair and balanced!
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
When rehashing a poll, showing a live feed from a local station, or summarizing whatever happens to be in the latest tabloid can make the money?
Seriously, folks. Think about it.
There could be dozens of reporters, embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Long-term. Providing up-to-date information, first-hand insight, and actually getting to know the areas they are in.
But, sadly, this would cost actual money (one could make various political arguments on each side of this as to why it is or is not covered, but let's focus on the bottom-line here). So, instead of, you know, covering these things in an in-depth fashion, the media might, every once in a while, drop in a guy for a 24-48 hour stint with the primary purpose of getting a nice quick video snap of something interesting. Whooptey-freakin'-doo. They'll spend the rest of the time sitting in hotels, out-sourcing reporting to heaven only knows who (and sometimes it appears the reporter doesn't even know). So rather than getting the look from someone who could have some expertise in the area, we get something filtered through Lord only knows who that's working as a stringer.
Then, instead of more reports, or an in-depth report, we get a short report followed by commentary from someone whose whole qualification on this matter - and all others - is the fact that he/she has an opinion on the matter. It's the same on all the networks, every last one of them. Why pay for reporters to go out and do expensive foot work when you can get short snippets from outsourced reports and then fill air time with someone blathering on about them?
There are a few good reporters on the ground in Iraq - they're called bloggers, and the reader automatically understands and accepts there's a bias to their reports. But for the most part, the mainstream television media has become a sick joke - whether it's CNN, Fox or MSNBC.
Because the networks & 24/7 news channels require viewers to stay-tuned through the commercials, they highlight the sensational and avoid the tedious. Stories that discuss the actual workings of government are commercial poison. This is a fundamental weakness of the medium of broadcast journalism.
Printed is the only hope.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I have worked in and around newsrooms from college on and I know, firsthand, where much of the problem lies. Journalism, that is, the finding and reporting of facts, has little to do with a journalism major, which is primarily interested in "the proper form." As the article says, "the emotional center," or, more specifically, an insulated and insular group of people attempting to capture the attention of the audience.
There was a study done on mid-level news markets about eight or nine years ago, and what they found is that reporters have a lot in common with one another. They tend to rent, not to buy. (This is quite understandable, as "two weeks notice" doesn't happen in news; more often a person finds out of Friday that they don't need to come back on Monday.) They tend to live in the city rather than suburban or rural areas. (Again, understandable given the commute.) They tend to be single rather than married (stability issues again) and use certain services more than others-- transit, fitness centers, and so on. The upshot was that the necessary living patterns for reporters-- again, not big-city reporters, but mid-market types-- meant both that a certain point of view was attracted to the lifestyle, and that the point of views of the people involved would necessarily change.
And that viewpoint-- we're not talking political here, though it does play a role-- agrees with 2% of the wider US population. Two percent.
Or in other words, the viewpoints of 98% of the population are foreign to the average reporter. Moreover, the average reporter is your typical person, which by and large means the vast majority of them are, basically, lazy. How many of you just get through your day, doing the basic minimum that your job requires? Well, imagine what that's like as a reporter, when you don't have somebody breathing down your neck to report the facts, but instead have them breathing down your neck to "find the emotional center." That reporter's going to find the emotional center, and is almost certainly going to do so using a mental template (Insert Issue A into Slot B and add Cute Kid/Pet/Quip at end.) You end up with lazy reporting.
Lazy reporting gets you those stories about farmers that always seem to imply that they must be hicks, or slow, or obsessed with "weird things" because they aren't smart/hip/normal enough to move to the city, like "real people." Or the ones that as what [X racial group] thinks about a subject, as if a vast group of people who share a few alleles must have similar opinions. Or, in the most common template of them all, the good little underdog against the evil corporation/city council/religious group.
Why do I get my news online? Because a well-done story, linked back to source documents and complete transcripts, is yards and away from "San Francisco tiger mauls two and kills one; blood and guts at eleven" (past teasers and grainy footage and the obligatory Horrified Bystander.) I know what news is, and I don't confuse it with reality-entertainment.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
A pretty good piece.
But it's not new. You can go back to Aleister Crowley complaining about the press (and he was a "celebrity" who constantly ended up in the press) being a bunch of hacks with an agenda - and that was back in the late 1800's. Hitler said the same thing except he blamed it all on the Jews.
Some years back former CIA director William Casey publicly said that ALL the mainstream media was either owned (through fronts) or controlled by the CIA. He wasn't joking when he said it.
I see nothing on the air to discredit that statement. Quite a few people have pointed out that large numbers of (supposedly) "ex"-CIA analysts are doing the writing and editing for most of the major media - even including some of the (supposedly) left wing "alternative" media. The excuse is that CIA analysts are good at producing concise, condensed recaps of analytical material - which makes them great journalists.
Except as General Gogol said, "Nobody ever leaves the KGB."
And once you get beyond the CIA, you've got corporate interests - and beyond, corporate stupidity - and beyond that, personal incompetence and stupidity.
How "news" could survive that chain of barriers without being completely useless is beyond me.
Look at today - we've got a bit of "news" coming out of India that supposedly Benazir Bhutto was shot with some kind of laser gun!
Right. I'll buy that for a dollar. More disinformation to confuse the matter, so that anybody who thinks she was killed by the Pakistani government looks like a "conspiracy nut".
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Might I recommend highly the Newshour with Jim Lehrer to all readers?
The program features actual experts. That don't yell over each other. Each has time to form a response to questions. It's amazing, astounding, the best TV news available, period.
What's wrong with TV news? They have to sell commercial time, so they air only the most sensational stories. Or the spice real news up to be sensational in order to sell commercial time. What's wrong is they claim to be in the business of providing news when they're really in the business of selling commercial time to advertisers. And the need for many viewers to watch these commercials are the reason for the sensational news.
Slashdot is about as guilty. See repeated stories of "bricking" where no devices were irrecoverably harmed, that is, "bricked".
Question everything
What I didn't see mentioned in the article is that the television medium itself appears to create a bias. There is a limit to people's attention span which imposes a limit on the length of a news bulletin and thus on the length and amount of stories. Also, television is an inherently visual medium. When I compare the stories from television with those from the internet or the newspapers, I always find that the bulletins on television always skip over those stories that either don't have a strong visual component or cannot be adequately explained in less than about three minutes. Perhaps television is just not the best medium for news.
JibJab had a pretty good piece about it, What we call the news.
News, or rather, reports about events that moved the world or had some serious impact for national and international developments, got replaced by patched together stories about some celebrities doing some crap. Now, what kind of "news" is that? What kind of "information" is that? Who the fuck cares whether some blonde bimbo shits into the pool of her ex? But we don't get to hear that some countries in Africa are fighting over their border, which can and does have some impact in our lives, even if it only leads to more expensive coffee.
Sit down for the next news and watch carefully what you get to hear. How much is about politics, how much about technology, how much about tabloid news (i.e. celebrities and other petty, meaningless, pointless and mindless rubbish)? You'll notice that the last category takes up a sizable portion if not the majority of the "information" you get.
Then, watch politics closely. How much is national, how much international? And how much of the national news is more than thinly veiled election advertisment?
How much is actually information, and how much is just something "inciting", something to speak to your heart rather than to your mind?
That's what's wrong with the news. It's not about information anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's what's wrong with it. The writers' strike has taken my daily dose of not quite fake news off the air. Fortunately the wait will be over next Monday.
Slashdot has nothing on dupes compared to the headline news ...
... 'Will we get snow tomorrow?' I'm guessing you could've told me in the time you toyed with telling us before every commercial break, making us think it's going to be on right after the commercials, but saving it for the LAST thing. I'm surprised they haven't tried 'Are tornados coming and should you run for your life? Find out next!'. Nope, we can go straight to the article, discover the article summary was completely inaccurate and/or misleading, without having to sit around for 45 minutes.
Well, so long as it involved interns and politicians. I can't remember how many times the news seemed preoccupied with Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky, or whatever mostly unimportant event that got covered each day with slightly new 'breaking' information. If you want that, you have to go to Digg to see what each 'breaking' website has on the latest Apple rumors.
At least Slashdot doesn't do the completely useless teasers
It's crap like this why I don't watch the TV news anymore. I do listen to news on the radio, and they do the same thing, but I get traffic reports every 10 minutes, which is important in the Washington, DC area -- I just don't listen to it for 2 hrs straight, or I know I'll hear the same stories repeated.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Here in Australia, we have one network that is government funded and does not fall victim to any form of sensationalism.
The Australian Broadcasting Commission, ambiguously referred to as the ABC, is entirely funded by the government and therefore has no interest in ratings. The news and current affairs coverage is usually top-notch, although occasionally it demonstrates a slight left-wing bias.
I switch to Channel Ten, and I see Sandra Sully cutting to some recycled footage while talking about some cloning technology, and concluding the story with "Of course, human cloning is still many years away." Then, they use computer effects to duplicate Sandra Sully, and the two Sandras say in unison.. "or is it?".. followed by 15 minutes of someone rambling on about "Entertainment News", followed by a cut to the loud and annoying weatherman who spends more time advertising charities than talking about the weather, then cut back to Sandra Sully who will engage in some useless banter with the sport guy. And the sports report is just a veiled advertisement for the sports programme they have on later that night, and then they do some "Australian Idol" news, and finish up to pictures of the beach.
ABC is at least a safe haven of real journalism. I'm not even sure the people working at Channel Ten are even journalists.
Cameron Poe: My first guess would be... a lot.
This is terrible, but the radio station where I lived at the time poked so much fun at the death of Kurt Cobain, that, well... the announcer went something like:
"AND NOW... another DOUBLE SHOT weekend of NIRVANA!" and then they'd play two Nirvana songs back to back. Man that still cracks me up.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
This is why I watch Univision (the Spanish Channel). At least they know their language AND English. This way I don't have to deal with pointless US stories about anorexic heiresses and the like. There's also PBS.
This is a signature. Bow to me.
"Case in point: The decline in educational content on channels such as Discovery and TLC."
Funny you should say that and talk about "lowest common denominator" because today's TLC show is about the anatomy of sex.
Anyway I don't think the problem is the Internet, but underutilization of broadband. Here's most of America with cable TV and usually a fat pipe between head-end and customer. Use your imagination on that.
Sorry but the failure to cover that story was pretty much right on. It wasnt of any significant importance. I was a fan of his but even can realize the fact that it was pop icon news and nothing more.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I have no idea what's wrong with television news today. All I know is, I stopped watching it about twenty years ago because of what was wrong with it then.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Portals like CrooksandLiars and Buzzflash (and, of course, /.) offer a concentration of relevant news that give any single web site, much less the boob tube, a run. Face it, Katie's legs just aren't that good anymore and the dimples are looking pretty cynical.
The old movie Network used to be a satire, now it is a documentary. The new book Shock Doctrine will reveal the ugly underbelly.
After you have experienced those works things like Trent Lott's recent retirement make completely repugnant sense and it will be much easier to understand what is not being reported and why.
"What's wrong with TV news? It receives Nielsen Ratings. That means they are not treated as informational, but rather as entertainment and require audience share (in the eyes of those who watch the "bottom line")."
I feel the same way about software. What's up with this whole "This is the year of desktop Linux"? And don't get me started on QA.
Isn't that about as much an oxymoron as "reality TV"?
-- Alastair
As for educational stuff... well that has to compete too. No more documentaries about dinosaurs, now they're called "Jurassic Crime Scene" with chalk outlines and "What happened here!".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Those stats are from 2006. After another year, that probably means there's only 25M or fewer viewers. Half the number from 1982. But the rates are much faster than they inummerately describe (they watcht too much TV to be good at math). 1M of 25M is a 4% drop in 2006; the 1M drop in 1983 was a 2% drop. And since the US population was about 230M in 1982, but 300M now, we're talking about a drop from about 22% to about 8% of the population tuning in. Which is a drop to almost one third, in case you're wondering.
That one third still watching TV is probably mostly the same people as a quarter century ago, now glued to sets in their nursing homes, unable to change the channel. And the stats don't even address the number of people who now don't just mainline the nightly news as the gospel truth, but also cross-reference with the Internet, including actually discussing the news on blogs.
The news has never been a good business for the broadcasters. It was just jammed into their commercial offerings to justify their use of the public airwaves and all kinds of other subsidies they get, and to make the rest of the "messages" (advertisements and the propaganda disguised as "news") more respectable. The rest of their programming makes more money in the ads that's their only real product. So they'll be glad to call it quits once no one is interested in holding them to any kind of "public service" any more.
As soon as about an hour or so of actual news is clickable YouTube on my bigscreen TV that my friends have all recommended, I'll be happy to let them get away with finally just canceling their shabby efforts.
--
make install -not war
Lou Dobbs is someone who channels the voice of the displaced. While he gets labeled "economically inaccurate" or "xenophobic", he presents the problems as part of a larger issue. Yes, I know his show is opinion, but it is defined more than "do absolutely whatever to get ratings".
If you don't mind wading in pure vitriol, O'Reilly and his sidekick will provide it(by the ton). If you [still] wonder why it's being worse off to be a US Citizen, then Lou Dobbs might do.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Actually, Kurt Cobain ventilating his skull falls under the "Fluff News" category for me.
I live in California where we have the stupidest state legislature in the history of civilization. They get up to endless shenanigans, but the only people covering it in any detail is two radio show hosts that everyone considered shock jocks, although to their credit they really delve into the minutiae of the issues pretty well, and they savagely pick on both Parties equally.
But where's the local newscasts? They're busy at mall openings or advertising a new movie. Seriously, one day the second story was the release of Spiderman III.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_ourselves_to_death/ tells us more than ./ about the effect of Television on our culture.
Interesting. Of course, stuff like that's easy to miss, because it's hidden among the three hours of infomercials, and:
Hip Hop Harry Pajama Party Pajama party at Hip Hop Central.
Hi-5 Teams: Animal The gang are all different animals.
Wilbur Dasha's New Friend; Ray Looses His Crow Ray's weather vane disappears.
Bigfoot Presents Teamwork; Space Rangers! Jose fails to listen to his partner; Meteor learns he has what it takes to be a great space rover.
...
10 Years Younger Sewing the Seeds to a New Look First impression.
A Baby Story Baby Frasca A couple wants a fourth child.
A Baby Story Baby Spar A fifth baby.While You Were Out Kansas City: Chaos in Progress A couple's clutter causes stress.
I don't have time to sort through the trash to find the treasure.
Note: That wasn't the name of a show, but it would make a good title for a documentary about the dumbing down of television.
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
The thing is that journalists ARE capable of good reporting, just watch sports news coverage. If world news could be dissected and debated like baseball or football trades, stats and injury reports we'd be fine. Unfortunately one generates audience and the other doesn't.
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
and i'll tell you why: i'd rather have a corrupt, compromised, bought and sold media with an agenda, chock a block with propaganda, and a public wary and untrustworthy of it
...cue the usual suspects here who believe the public is dumb and stupid and believes everything they see on the teevee anyway
than a media supposedly annoited as impartial and fair
oh really? who says they are fair and impartial? who carries that governmental seal of approval?
no one does. all media, all the time, and forever more, is opinionated
an impartial media is something that can never exist
do you want people to stop thinking and mindlessly accept what they see on the teevee?
well then why do you want to push the burden of critical distrust in the media departments, rather than in the mind of the public
the media is a lost cause. philosophically, it cannot be depended to be imaprtial. the real battle is in the mind of the general public
and in such a pov, an imperfect does us all a service: it makes sure they think. it keeps pushing the envelope on what bullshit it tries to shove down the public's throat, keeping their minds awake and untrusting, making sure someone somewhere is saying "hey, wait a minute, this is bs
as if shitting on the general public is supposed to win you any points other than to prove you are an elitist in an ivory tower, and therefore disconnected from what really matters in the first place
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"I see nothing on the air to discredit that statement. Quite a few people have pointed out that large numbers of (supposedly) "ex"-CIA analysts are doing the writing and editing for most of the major media - even including some of the (supposedly) left wing "alternative" media. The excuse is that CIA analysts are good at producing concise, condensed recaps of analytical material - which makes them great journalists."
Is this anything like "the entire banking industry is controlled by the jews"?
Wikipedia links do NOT have a trailing slash!
By the way, I don't think I care anymore. Television lost, the Internet won.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
For Pete's sake, people, remember who is the customer in the "TV transaction".
It's NOT the viewers. It's the ADVERTISERS.
The advertisers pay the stations to wave their products in front of X number of eyeballs. The television shows (and yes, that includes news shows) are simply the bait to keep X at the highest possible number. The programs are NOTHING MORE THAN BAIT. Since the presence of bait+advertising is zero-sum (ie more bait means less minutes of advertising to viewers), then the ONLY tactical goal of the studio is to make a show that will keep a person watching even when the bait is taken away (commercial breaks).
Keep that in mind at all times, and you'll find that watching TV, while occasionally entertaining, quickly becomes repulsive.
-Styopa
When you watch TV, the content is predetermined to some extent. There are a limited number of channels, and you are stuck with one of them. The internet, for all practical purposes, has an infinite amount of material to choose from. Because of this, the internet encourages people to seek out better and better content, thus forcing websites to compete on a higher level. I, for one, don't have cable or satellite TV. Most of the media that I watch comes from the internet, because I can choose which sites have the best and most relevant content. The internet also lets me contribute to that content if I choose.
Seek and ye shall find.
and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news.
That's amusing, because they've got it backwards. They're supposed to report real news, and strive to report frivolous sort of news in order to interest more people, as the Daily Show/the Colbert Report make comedy, report real news and thrive. They think people don't care about serious news and care more about Paris Hilton, and that's right, to a limited extent. People care about serious news, it's just their way of reporting them that doesn't work.
Reminds me of a satire about the youth of the 2020's going "In 20 years, young people won't believe that there was a time in which TV news weren't presented by comedians."
On a side note, here's something I really enjoy about these two shows, they focus on what actually matter. Sure, when thousands of people die in an earthquake at the other end of the world it's a sad thing, and I'm glad CNN reports it, but it's not relevant to us, that's why it hardly ever makes it to the Daily Show, and that's why we like to get our news from such shows, because of their relevance.
You just got troll'd!
Firefox burped and I lost my entire post. Rather than rewrite all 5 splendidly crafted paragraphs, suffice to say that I have only recently become aware of my own ignorance and naivette when it comes to following the news. And it depresses me terribly.
There is simply too much glass..
Not as bad a Paul though.
He's a one man demonstration of what was wrong with the record industry. Forty years of crap, #1's via payolla (but only one per disk).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What's wrong with TV news in two words: FAIRNESS DOCTRINE.
It really is as simple as that. In 1987 news media was crippled. And that was the beginning of the end.
One of the major problems with TV reporting is that the costs of doing real news worthy reporting for a 5 minute on air segment is astronomical compared to just calling up some "expert" to talk about what they think happened. And as it turns out, the pundit probably scores better for most demographics (ie. they look better, sound better).
We saw this happen (again) with the run up to the Iraq War where it would have taken months of reporters actually doing the research and tracking leads to develop a story that many people would find uncomfortable if not right hostile. The alternative is that they call up some retired military guy and ask him "What do you think is going on?" Almost every news source in the US opted for the cheaper pundits than the expensive reporting and we got exactly what we paid for.
I usually get my world news from The real news network, because they actually analyze the news in an objective way. They are supposed to grow in 2008, and follow the US elections closely.
...to hours of crap when I can just go to drudge?
00's popped collar wearing guido?
Watch BBC news coverage of America. They're far worthier of that appellation than any outlet in the United States, and they also mostly don't give a crap which political party or corporation they might offend by reporting the facts. As an additional plus, they are the one media operation that Rupert Murdoch can't buy and subvert.
It seems many other Americans agree, because the BBC news seems to have grown from being on only one channel (BBC America) morning and night, to four.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Sure, the sensationalism is short-sighted, much like the cuts in media attention to books described in Gail Poole's Faint Praise, but each short-term decision has a logic behind it. Unhappy with it? Me too. But we can only vote with our eyeballs and wallets, and hope that media companies eventually take note. Judging from how long ago Fallows published Breaking the News and how little seems to have changed since, I'm not overly optimistic.
Frontline (AU version) should be mandatory high school viewing.
It really shows the faslification of news that is so common today.
Newshour with Jim Lehrer is also shown on SBS.
i wish i could stop
I can't understand how people manage to sit through TV news at all; especially since the days when 80%+ of every newscast began being directly related to the Middle East. I'm sorry, I don't care how many new soldiers are dead, how many car bombs have gone off, and who's avoiding capture from American troops. And if there isn't enough depressing news to report overseas, they'll add in reports on local murders, stabbings, robbings, and car accidents. I have better things to do with my time than wallow in depression over every evil thing mankind has done in the last 24 hours.
I have absolutely no respect for news media, nor do I trust anything they try to spread. No matter how much "true journalism" these bastards preach, please do try to keep in mind that in the end, these people are employees of corporations who are out to do nothing more than make money. As long as news is reported by people out to make money and/or to gain ratings, news will never be... newsworthy.
search for 'jon stewart crossfire'
like an ominous 'duh'
(here's a link until they pull it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11TaDDUVcGQ/)
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Lawsuits. 60 minutes went after the tobacco industry a few years ago and CBS was threatened by a huge lawsuit. We haven't seen any decent investigative journalism in America since then. None of the U.S. broadcasters wants to spend the money it takes to do a good job at broadcasting news, never mind investigative journalism anymore. And on top of that, they are now fearful of the potential for lawsuits in litigation happy America. And unfortunately this terrible attitude in news management is spreading. Journalism in Canada which was generally very good and less prone to ratings battles with the entertainment shows, or afraid to show news segments because of moral majority objections (if a witness said 'fuck' during a news story interview, that is what comes on during the news... as a small example), has been slipping. I'd say it is still above the current general U.S. news coverage but it is being dragged down as network execs try to turn it into "infotainment" there as well. I'm not sure how U.K. news is these days, but my understanding is that they used to have a great investigative journalism tradition... I'd like to hear how it is now-a-days. Anyway, I am really pining for another Edward R. Murrow to come along. But I fear that if he did, the network execs would turn him away as not exciting enough, or too much of a danger in attracting lawsuits. And my bet is the latter... after all the confrontations of investigative journalism can be very exciting. But that is because you know the news people are putting it on the line. Except now, the network won't back them up any more.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
That's the beauty of Lou Dobbs, he doesn't have to be anything other than the train wreck that he is to get ratings. You watch his show and you get the feeling he thinks he has it because he's some towering intellectual giant (or O'Reilly for that matter). Whatever, they both press people's buttons and that gets ratings. They're like guests on Jerry Springer with million-dollar paychecks and nice suits, but still totally unaware how much the media bigwigs are laughing at them while they rake it in.
Immigration is a complex issue and I don't pretend to have an easy solution. All I know is that if I was born dirt poor in some rural wasteland in Mexico with a family and no opportunity, I'd be cutting your lawn or washing your dishes right now. The way Lou talks you'd think the first thing he'd do if he woke up a dirt poor illegal in East L.A. tomorrow is turn himself in. Heh, just not buying it. If I thought for one second he would feel the same way if it was a bunch of white Irishmen sneaking across the border I'd take back every bad thing I'd ever said about him.
Sorry, but "better than O'Reilly" doesn't get you over the bar.
This is so ironic.
TFA is appealing to the networks to understand and adapt its news to an audience which TFA doesn't realize stopped watching decades ago. Broadcast news is dead - no one watches it. Print media is close behind. Seems to me that the only people that care enough to really moan about traditional news sources are other traditional news sources. In terms of irrelevant self-indulgence this reminds of the debate whether Bert Parks should be replaced by Ron Eli as the host of the Miss America Pageant (yeah I'm that old...) or BBS flamewars about Kirk vs Picard (yeah I'm that old..)
Heck, even the mainstream politicians are starting to realize this - Michael Geist's Facebook campaign was much more effective than any traditional petition plus print and TV news conference press release.
As a Brit who has traveled extensively in the USA (visited 48 of 50 states) since 1975 and worked for an American Company for 20+ years I have seen US TV News really dumb down over the years.
Lets take this example.
At the time of the first Gulf War, many National Guard Units were being called up. I was on Holiday in New Orleans and the TV News had around 50 minutes (including ad breaks) devoted to the departure of National Guard units to bases where they were replacing the troops who were on their way to the Gulf. Note the coverage was all about the NG units not the regular forces leaving to fight. Lots of weeping relatives and yellow ribbons were shown.
At the end of the News, there was a 15 second piece about the Resignation of Maggie Thatcher ( British PM). Given the Britain was sending many thousands of soldiers/sailors & airmen to the gulf to fight alongside the US forces, I felt almost insulted by the coverage given.
The coverage of the Current US Election(Iowa etc) is quite widespread on UK Broadcast Media (TV & Radio). We are aware of the implications that a change in the occupant of the White House can have on Global stability etc. I wonder how many US citizens are equally aware given the predominance of coverage of 'Celebrity' has on US TV. I was in the US a couple of months ago and was amazed at the amount of time given to what I call Celebrity PAP rather then serious news items. This is IMHO dumbing down.
Personally, I don't give a about the antics/sex/drug/etc habits of so called Celebrities. But I'm at the age where I can be a member of the 'Grumpy Old Men' club (Excellent BBC TV Series).
I don't see how it can slide any further than the local news in anytown America. I don't know how many more stories I can listen to about how an everyday item in my kitchen might kill or otherwise harm me.
as much as ppl knock Fox News, there's a reason why they are smoking everyone else in viewership... deny it all u want, but its the facts.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
I'm surprised to hear that Six Sigma even makes the production of turbine generators more efficient. I actually doubt this. Six Sigma is a management fad, and it's hard to identify exactly what it brings to the table. In fact, although I had to put up with it for so long, I'm still at a loss to describe it. Maybe this excerpt from its Wikipedia page will help:Essentially what happens is that people at managerial levels have no idea what to do, and they reach toward this thing as a canned recipe for how to do their jobs. And it certainly wastes a lot of time, since you have to get training and attend seminars, and it certainly impresses people who confuse activity with progress. It sure as hell generates a lot of Powerpoint slides. It also seems to have a cult-like quality to it. Six Sigma directives come raining down from the highest levels of management and the urgency behind them is palpable- and everyone is freaked because it's all incredibly important but nobody understands what it is.
For non-Aussies, Frontline was a satire of current affairs shows, and the behind the scenes dealing that goes on with them. It was broadcast in the mid-nineties, and was widely acclaimed for being disturbingly true to how things were actually done. Highly recommended.
Again, I can't sleep. It's well after midnight and once again I'm awake. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. I know there is more to life than this. I know, for certain, that my life, and the lives of those who are like me could have so much more meaning than they do right now. Each day doesn't need to feel wasted. I know there is some unfinished purpose to our lives. I know that there is something we should be doing. I know other people think this way. I know that most television, advertising, religion, work, whatever, are a waste. I know that there are things we should be accomplishing right now instead of sitting on our asses, getting fatter by the second. I'm awake right now because I can't let another second go by without doing something about it. I know others think like me. I know they are scattered all over this fine planet. I know that in order to accomplish this greater... life, we need to start talking, start thinking, start building things together. We are getting old. Every day is another lost day of potential, another lost opportunity to build the new world we crave. I envision a world of freedom and meaning. I envision a place where people have purpose behind their actions, and who carve out their own destinies from the stone of each new day. I believe in clear thoughts and reason. I believe in letting each person find their own path and recognizing that new ideas may come from any source. I believe in a world where difference, diversity and change are embraced as great virtues. I long for a time when we humans understand ourselves deeply enough to have reasons for the things we do; to have purpose and a goal rather than aimless meandering followed by a nasty death with our potential unfulfilled. I am awake right now because I want to change things. If you feel the same way, contact me. Let's start together. oubliette@hush.com
You might want to read some Noam Chomsky. He talks about this type of thing a lot. The important thing to understand is that as the TV audience you are the product. Your eyes are there to be sold to the advertisers who pay for the channel. The channel will deliver whatever gets eyes-on to be sold. To expect truth or quality in mass-media in today's climate is a stretch....
The whole reason for being of the televison medium now-a-days is to provide a medium to disseminate highly commercial advertising to the vulnerable and less than fully literate sectors of society who are the most likely to respond to the commercial messages.
In many countries the TV news is the first major program of the evening and is used competitively to 'capture' the above audience. Thus it's filled with horrific, salacious and generally mindless items designed to do just that.
In almost the entire English speaking world, television is evil, corrosive, corrupting and to be avoided as much as possible, lest it rot your soul. [10% of BBC, 20% of ABC (Aust), and 90% of mvgroup excepted].
T.V., and the advertising thereon, makes Brin and Page et al appear to be a team of top ranking saints.
he had a SHOT GUN
Uhmm...'cause it's on TV?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
So, when Elvis died, you don't think that deserved more than a brief, passing mention in the media? And his death wasn't half as surprising as Cobain's.
I'm NOT saying every single celebrity death should be turned into a Anna Nicole-style media clusterfuck, but I do think that when a once-every-few-decades (i.e. "legendary") creative talent dies a sudden death, it deserves more than a five second mention. Even the Britney Spears of the world deserve more than that. It doesn't make the news important on the scale of, say, what's going on in Iraq right now, but life isn't *just* about the serious shit.
The problem is, mainstream media either completely ignores something because it considers its specialized or subculture (which I guess is what happened with Cobain), or it assumes something is of vital importance to EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE. I simply can't escape Britney Spears shit (and now Jamie Lynn Spears shit, too). Every single *hard rock* (not pop) station has the DJs talk about them in-between songs. Even the classic rock stations are doing it, now. And it's nothing really significant... nothing to do with their music and nothing earth-shattering like a death, just "OMG Britney shaved her head! OMG there's a picture of Britney's pussy! OMG Britney was drunk at a performance! OMG some gay emo kid posted a whiny, crying video about it all! OMG, her sister is pregnant!" Jesus Christ, I wish I didn't know all of this about her stupid stupid little life, but so long as I have ANY contact with media, I will continue to be bombarded with it.
And I'm sorry, for all her fame you just can't put her in the same fucking category as Kurt Cobain. She doesn't write her own songs. The songs she sings aren't experimental or genre-defining like Kurt's. She doesn't have a particularly remarkable singing voice (and if you think Kurt didn't either, listen to his rendition of Where Did You Sleep Last Night. Actually, pretty much anything off of Unplugged or Heart Shaped Box is extremely good.), and she doesn't play any instruments. What she has is polished image that probably had more to do with the work of the people around her. This isn't just my own bias here. Even crappy pop culture channels like VH-1 will always put Smells Like Teen Spirit at the top of any top 100 list its eligible for. He appealed to pop-culture nuts AND a wide variety of subcultures (including subcultures that actually care about musical talent and experimentation, subcultures that cared about his political statements, etc.) That makes him a hell of a lot more than just a "pop icon".
I am afraid to say i get my (uk) news from "Have I Got News From You" and "The Now Show". I gave up watching mainstream news years ago and frankly feel happier for it. The problem with BBC news is they try and cover everything on the TV and radio. Newspapers and t'net let you read the bits you are interested in while TV makes you sit through everything. In the end it's just not worth it.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
eh, meant off of In Utero, not off of Heart Shaped Box. Specifically, was thinking of Heart Shaped Box, Rape Me, and Pennyroyal Tea.
Lowest Common Denominator (tagging beta confirmed).
It's a programming mindset that's afflicted all forms of media for decades now, and which has confirmed Sturgeons Law to be correct:
"Ninety percent of everything is crud."
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Don't you really mean "agree with my world view", because only a total tool would think Reuters in unbiased, last year once again had them caught out several times. Don't also forget that it is thanks to Reuters that the RIAA and the like can just publish their press-releases with whatever they want because Reuters (and other press agencies) have made it their business to simply publish press-releases and NEVER EVER investigate, but still insisting these copied press-releases are "real" news.
As for the BBC, if you think the BBC is unbiased, you are insane. Don't mistake, "ooh they don't say the same as fox news" with unbiased. True unbiased reporting requires taking NO position. Not left, not right. Not hard line, not bleeding heart.
Today the weather was cold. BIASED! By whose standards?
Today the temp reach a low of -4 during the midday. Unbiased?
No, it is the "low" that does it. Some might consider it a high.
Today, at 12:00 the temperature at the bilt (dutch met office) reached -4 celcius. That is unbiased.
Now look at the BBC and Reuters again and read the texts carefully and see just how many times the BBC/Reuters takes a position, trying to convince you.
I see the claim of unbiased reporting attached to the BBC so often I think most people just don't understand the meaning of the word.
Unbiased reporting means reporting the facts, not opinions. Note that at no point does the original author of the story we are discussing EVER seem to want to report JUST the facts, he is upset because NBC did not want to report his OPINION!
As brutal as it may be, the number of iraq casualties is a fact. The number of which qualify as civilian is already an opinion. That people should care about it at all, that is even more of an opinion. Unbiased reporting is extremely rare, stuff like "the coldest day of 2007" is about it. Note that the BBC like almost everyone else now has weather segments that become a part of the SHOW, complete with "LIVE REPORTING".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
News, in general, is a business, the business of selling advertising. The bottom line is the bottom line, therefore views are going to largely represent those of the buyers. The buyers, in most cases large and wealthy corporations, are the same that funnel large amounts of money into political campaigns and therefore drive legislation. Hence, critical and/or dissenting voices are nil in any major media outlet, be it television, radio, or print. This is simple institutional analysis, and it has been this way for decades, perhaps even more than 100 years, since the cost of printing presses drove most small papers into oblivion. It is propaganda, pure and simple.
You've hit a pet peeve of mine there, and I don't know if it's even racial.
The thing is, it's not only ghetto kids. A lot of white adults too seem to have jumped on some sort of a "computers are too complicated, I don't have time for that nerdy crap" bandwagon. Even as more and more jobs require at least elementary computer skills, it's become more and more unfashionable to admit having even those minimal skills.
And it's not just believing that they can't handle it, and giving up without even trying. A lot do try, see that they can, then try even harder to hide that from their peers. I've seen people who _can_ handle a computer when they're alone, turn into helpless illiterates when there's a witness there.
We scared off the normal people, if you will. It's become a thing of pride to be as far from nerdy as possible.
In fact, in some circles it's become fashionable to be stupid. Cue a downward spiral as each member tries to not end up in the upper 50% of their group.
It's kinda funny. Human culture for _millenia_ respected intelligence. If you look as far back as the ancient Egyptians, a little known fact is that they actually had a phonetic set, but it was seen as a thing of _pride_ to be smart and educated enough to use the hieroglyphs. A relatively common form of flattery was to address a letter "to your scribe", meaning, basically, "I know that you can read it yourself and are your own scribe." The Greeks and Romans took pride in being able to read, write and master such subjects as administration, law, rhetoric and philosophy. (Which back then was _the_ science.) Etc.
Even the middle ages, weren't that dark a time in that aspect. There still were plenty of people trying to do alchemy, astrology and philosophy, which back the was what science _was_. Sure, it looks like ignorant and pointless compared to the modern scientific method and the later figures of the Renaissance, but nevertheless, those people were trying to figure out how the world works. Or there were advances in technology that we don't even learn about these days. The physics of the great gothic cathedrals and their mess of buttresses, are nothing short of amazing when you consider that they didn't even have a proper notation for that. Sure, it's trivial nowadays to calculate the vectors and see why it works, but that someone came up with that back then, it's amazing.
And again, noone considered it shameful to be seen in the company of an astrologer or alchemist. It was a thing of pride, in fact, and even kings and bishops made sure to have one around.
If you look as late as the 19'th century and early 20'th, the explosion of science was partially because people actually took advantage of the increasing opportunities to get an education. We have a whole category of "absent minded scientists", which were really nerdier than most people on Slashdot nowadays, and noone thought it was a social disgrace to be seen with one.
So where did we go wrong? How did it become fashionable to be the most stupid of one's peers?
How many potentially brilliant minds are we losing to that fashion? E.g., the ghetto kids you mention, some of them could become great scientists, and one or two might even discover the next great thing. But they don't, because their peers would mock any kind of academic interest or achievement.
How much is this costing us, as a society? And how long until it bites us all in the arse?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Liberal bias and cowardice.
As for bias, the attempt by CBS to smear Bush with forged documents is just one example, there are so many others it's no wonder people don't trust the mainstream media.
The cowardice can be seen in how many news programs and newspapers ran the Mohammed cartoons: by my last count it was two in the US. They sneer at Christians and Jews because they can safely do so, but because Muslims show their displeasure with criticism by killing the critics, our fearless media chose not to report a major story.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Big business is one of the most powerful forces in the world today. It should come as no surprise that a big network campanies which are paid by advertisers (read: big business), are only interested in promoting their business friendly view of the world, reality by damned. How can you expect TV news organisations to report on things like the war when they are being paid by the same companies that profitting from it?
For-profit news reporting has been a continuing disaster.
--
Simon
why would anyone want to listen to half-truths, distortions, and advertising?
Good reading offered recently on WorldNetDaily includes "Journalistic Fraud" and "Hillary's Secret War to Silence the Internet Journalists"
As with most things in life, the "News Industry" is driven by demand. Hate seeing reports about Britney/Lindsey/Paris/Suri/Jen/Stedman? Guess what - you're stuck with it because there are enough people who watch those stories and buy those tabloids to make them into a profitable business.
The same goes for the traditional News Media in general. There are more than enough people watching the alarmist, cookie-cutter dribble to perpetuate its profitability. CNN, MSNBC, and FOXNEWS are unbearable to watch.
It's great to theorize why the News Media fails, but in the end, until the market starts to demand other outlets/methods on a large enough scale, we'll be stuck with stories about Anna Nichole Smith.
FTFA: At the conclusion of the screening, there were a few suggestions for tightening here and clarification there. Finally, an NBC/GE executive responsible for "standards" shook his head and wondered about the tone in the reporter's voice. "Doesn't it seem like she has a point of view here?" he asked.
There was silence in the screening room. It made me want to twitch, until I spoke up. I was on to something but uncertain I wasn't about to be handed my own head. "Point of view? What exactly do you mean by point of view?" I asked. "That war is bad? Is that the point of view that you are detecting here?"
Seems to me that the story author is suffering sour grapes syndrome because an editor labeled his fluff/opinion piece for what it was and rejected it. Good call on that editor's part. Gives me some hope that all news execs and managers are not crusading crybabies and some actually understand the difference between news, opinion, and feel-good (or -bad) fluff.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Hmm...strangely enough, most of the western nations and other like Russia seemed to have thought that Iraq did indeed have WMDs and WMD programs going. In the US, go back and listen to what Clinton/Gore said...they too thought Iraq had WMDs. The UK intelligence thought there were WMDs.
Not to mention that Iraq itself didn't help its case any at all by not cooperating fully with the UN inspectors. Saddam kept acting like he had something to hide. If he'd have let insepctors in, let them go anywhere they wanted with NO obstruction, and had been fully transparent about things.....he'd still be in power today, killing and torturing his citizens just like he'd been doing before. If he'd show fully clean hands....no invasion would have occured.
You may disagree with the way, that's cool. I personally am horrified how it has been mis-managed, we should have been in and out of there by now. Hindsight is 20/20....but, don't kid yourself...MOST countries at that time though Iraq had WMDs of some sort...he had already used some (chemical Ali ring a bell?) already...and had done nothing to try to dispell the notion that he no longer had then and no longer intended to pursue them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
>The programs are NOTHING MORE THAN BAIT.
I submit that this is the future of all digital content, indeed much of it already is: It's nothing more than bait to get you to visit the web site to generate ad revenue.
Digital content is rapidly being reduced to zero worth, as it is available for free. But distribution points for the free content will struggle to use it as bait to get you coming back to visit - to view advertising.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I recall in the 70's, Mom home by 3:30 (teacher), Dad home by 5 (engineer). Mom worked on dinner when she got in...Dad got home, they would sit and talk together, then we would have dinner. 6:30 and Dad was watching Walter Chronkite while we did the dishes. Fast forward to today: With my 11 yo son and my wife, we are lucky to eat dinner by 8pm. The first shot of any news on the tube is the 10pm news show, and mainly for headlines and the weather updates for the upcoming day (in Mass, snow?, etc). Face it; RSS feeds, cell phone updates, a computer everywhere - what is the "Evening News" going to tell me other than what slant the network broadcasting is taking on a particular subject (IE: Why I need to bail out those who took mortgages they can't pay). I read what I want, and read multiple sources and gather my own opinion. Talking heads ? Soon to all be on a News Anchor Realty Show...
Navy Tim www.navytim.com
Well, that much is clear. And I'm certainly not proposing to stop people from getting what they want.
The question was, sorta, when did people start wanting to be stupid, and why? When did it become fashionable to have the intellectual and cultural horizon of a midget in a well?
I'm not even as much asking about the news, as such. That is IMHO effect, rather than cause. As you were saying, people get the news they want to get. And I could even live happily with them getting some brainless entertainment -- news or otherwise -- for a couple of hours a day, if they still used their brains the rest of the time.
But that's just my problem: when they turn off that TV or log off from those gossip sites, they go on to try to be even _more_ stupid IRL. For some people, when they take a break from their circle of RL friends and turn on the TV, their IQ actually goes up one notch. On those TV news they might even accidentally learn that there's a war in Iraq, or that some weird place called Africa even exists, or some trivia. But then they go to their RL circle of friends and it's time for another round of, "oh, I'm too stupid for computers... and I'm too stupid for geography too, and I'm too stupid to have an opinion about Iraq, and generally, little old me has trouble even figuring out which shoe goes on the left foot in less than 2-3 tries. Each day."
Even that gossip and trivia they heard about on TV, are promptly discarded unless they're in the commonly-agreed fashionably brainless set, so as not to make their friends feel inadequate.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The taste for muck really hasn't changed in a hundred years. William Randolph Hearst is famous for having ordered that every one of his newspapers have a picture of a beautiful woman on the cover. Preferably, he liked to add, in several pieces. It is axiomatic that the more prurient the interest the better the sales.
There was a decades-long period after World War II when there was a culture of intellectual balance. My take is that it kind of grew out of wartime censorship. But now we are back to the days of yellow journalism when the Hearsts and the Pulitzers ruled the roost --- think Rupert Murdoch. Except we have broadcast. Now, it's true, that what is interesting to some is not interesting to others. However, for the broadest demographic it is the gossip, fires, murders, storms and scandals that excite interest and grab eyeballs. They always have. The truth is that stories of great national importance are sometimes really pretty boring. Compare these three headlines:
CITING INFLATION THREAT FEDERAL RESERVE RAISES INTEREST RATE A FULL BASIS POINT IN SUDDEN MOVE.
With
PORN STAR FOUND DISMEMBERED IN TRUNK OF RAP ARTIST'S BENTLEY
with
LEADING US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE FOUND DEAD OF DRUG OVERDOSE IN NEVADA MOTEL
Now in terms of importance, lives affected jobs affected people affected, the first story is really pretty important, arguably the most important. Such an unprecedented move would probably slam the stock market precipitating hundreds of thousands of job losses and all the misery that comes with it. Is it a lead? No. Despite its wide reaching importance, it's a yawn --- at least to most people. The stock market crash the next day might make the general headlines. But not the Fed move (Except on the financial page.) The second story is a prime example of a story of interest. But the third story combines both elements. That would probably be the lead any good news editor would choose; that is, unless it was a purely business news show. As long as the news is an advertising-driven economic proposition you're always going to see stories of interest predominate. The years of balanced television news in the four decades after World War II were more the exception than the rule. And it's only in countries with independent, but state-owned news channels, like the British Broadcasting Corp., that you see intelligent balanced news. The British love their tabloid smut, to be sure, but they don't get it from the Beeb. And they don't expect it either. Of course it's paradoxical. One does not really want state-owned news broadcasters either. That's a nasty slippery slope. I don't have any answers, except perhaps, to say that unbridled capitalism works very nicely to generate wealth (a good thing), but it is not the answer to making every institution in society work the way it should. Maybe things are as they should be. The current model does give people what they want (or at least what they think they want), even though it might not be in their best interest. We do have listener-sponsored radio and television. You'll find me tuned in to PBS or National Public Radio for my news and analysis, not broadcast television. Except, perhaps, on a slow news day. What has Brit got up to now to I wonder?
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
IMHO the reason that network news (and all TV for that matter) fails is that it is push-media. It creates one signal and tries to broadcast that as widely as possible. Because of this, it must always cater to the "average viewer" which is nobody in particular. Everybody has different "niche" interests, but any one niche is too small of an audience, so the motivation is always to get the widest appeal by compromising any "niche" (ie actual content) with generalized sound-bites. Internet media allows the user to select what content they want to read, so it can cater to a vast array of niche interests (even to absurd extremes sometimes). Newspapers also have this ability, because a reader can selectively read a subset of articles which interest them. With TV however, the viewer must sit and passively receive whatever content is spit out, the only choice is to change channels or turn off. This prompts the network planners to make every moment into either a sound bite or a teaser of exciting things to come, trying to hold the viewers attention with an insubstantial smear of flashy graphics and vacuous commentary.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
I think Google's grand design is to take time to cultivate its various functions independently, united solely by the simple search function (and all functions delivering ads, in/directly). Over time, as their individual product brands dominate, Google's API will capture a large enough developer base to compete with Microsoft on that primary essential asset: developer mindshare. Once Google has the advantage (or at least reliable momentum towards it), Google can itself unify some of these products, which will then finally become actual targets with which Microsoft can more conventionally compete - materializing only once ready to compete.
The flagship will probably be a social network descended from Orkut, which will let people compose media/app suites with more or less interactive content (dependent on who's composing it), derived from the entire Internet's content, but within the Google platform. The social network will be the way consumers filter results guided by lexical searches, "related" by their associates' editorial decisions.
If this sounds a lot like the 1996 Web in essence, but just with a lot more elaborate linking and media types, that's because it is. Google is booming precisely because it's as close to the unsupervised Internet, but with a single corporate entry point, as possible. Which means a return to "homepages" of actual people, linked to what they idiosyncratically like, is a recipe for success.
--
make install -not war
NYT (Print Version) FTW!
I'm fighting The War on Drugs!
If anyone's interested, we just had a very similar discussion over at muyuubyou that went out into the multiple hundreds of comments.
Full Title
Brain Box: How television broke the minds of three generations and turned a Democracy into an empire.
Linky
http://www.jakepcw.com/muyuubyou/?p=595
only one everything
Sad but True, Vote John Stewart for the 6:00 News Enlightening, Non-Gossip News...Yet Entertaining -- Imagine that? It would be interesting to see where the TV ratings go to should they try that. Do you Think that ratings would dip enough at the News stations that they might do something about it? One would Hope, but let hope they don't change to FOX news.
Discovery is still not too bad. But TLC stopped being The Learning Channel many years ago. The acronym now refers to "The Life Channel", hence all the reality programs on home improvement and medical stuff.
On a side note though, a lot of the stuff on TLC *IS* educational, just to a different audience. I find many of the home improvement shows convey a lot of valuable information I use in my own home.
The BBC has come downhill a lot recently as well with a lot more focus on the casual discussions between anchors rather than actual coverage (at least in prime-time slots). I strongly recommend Channel 4 News - the only thing still worh watching on the UK's channel 4. www.channelfour.com/news/
It's not even data, it's NEWS. Useless for any practical purposes.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Saddam had a reason to make everyone think he had WMDs, and it starts with "I" and rhymes with "bran".
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Newhour with Jim Leher on PBS is the only tv news worth watching.
No, that's not why TV news is soundbites. When you reduce the amount of time in which someone is allowed to make their point, you reduce what they can say. When one has little time to speak, one can only make the same old points we've heard a dozen times before. Reframing the issue to talk about new ways of thinking takes time. Explaining more significant points that help the audience understand larger patterns takes time. The corporations that own so many TV channels all benefit from keeping tight control over the ends of allowable debate. For instance, when there's war analysis the corporate news will invite a military official (current or former) and someone else who is pro-war, so at best the debate is sure to never bring up any of the lies that were repeated by the corporate media. Instead, as so many news clips show, you get a weapons hardware show (complete with 3-D graphics of tanks, missiles, etc.). Very rarely will someone with an anti-war perspective get on-air, according to FAIR in a study of news shortly after the US invaded Iraq:
When a network is owned by a military contractor (like NBC which is owned by contractor General Electric), it's all too clear who benefits from the status quo and why this is the way it is.
Democracy Now! is a daily TV news hour that gives people a chance to speak (audio and video archives on archive.org in a variety of formats, transcripts of a lot of their segments are on their website gratis). They cover important stories, not the fluff (celebrity goings-on, daily weather reports, sports, and traffic reports) and they cover many stories the corporate news won't touch or won't discuss from a perspective not favored by corporate lobbyists (independent and lesser-known candidates in big elections, "third rail" issues like the death penalty, Israel/Palestine conflict, Texaco/Chevron/Coca-Cola killings around the world, corporate media control, universal health care).
Digital Citizen
Iraq thought it was in their best interest to keep things a mystery here.
They neither confirmed nor denied the existence of WMD's and though that
this was in their best interests strategically in their own region.
Remember that Iraq was probably more interested in what Tehran thought than
what Washington thought.
This would not be the first time that some idiot bluffed the US into thinking
that it was more powerful than it actually was. The cold war started this way.
Khruschev made all sorts of (in a very russian-male style btw) bogus bragging
claims that the US couldn't confirm or deny. So the US simply took him at his
word.
However, all of that is irrelevant.
The real issues are one of strategy and regional politics and our own (US)
national interests. The bigger problem is that Bush ignored his own spymasters
and his own generals. He played the part of the typical corporate vampire and
marginalized anyone that had their own opinions and weren't "team players".
The Bush problem is that he needs to surround himself with yes men.
He can't tolerate independent Spies, independent Generals or independent scientists.
No head of state can function effectively without these. They depend too heavily
on the counsel of relevant experts.
Bush vs. Reagan or Nixon.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Technically true - most countries thought there was a possibility that Iraq had a few "WMDs" - like a few chemical grenades and no useful delivery system, but they didn't think that these constituted a threat to anybody. Hussein had to accept inspections, the US controlled the air space, his economy was severely restricted. Most countries thought he was not a problem, and most countries were right about that, as we now know.
Saddam kept acting like he had something to hide.
Yep, he was a scumbag, as we all realize. He probably wasn't all that bright, either. Having said that, pointing to the non-cooperation of a known scumbag, after you've killed around 100000 people and wrecked an entire country's infrastructure is a rather lousy excuse.
The problem with network news is that the content is indirectly chosen by CORPORATE SPONSERS who only buy advertising if they think it will hit their demographic.
The most interesting point in the article was that some networks didn't run advertising during the 9/11 attacks because they COULDN'T SELL ANY, not out of any kind of respect for the victims.
Now perhaps you understand why our wars appear bloodless. They'd only be able to sell advertising to Pfizer if they covered it properly.
I don't see how we can ever expect to get consistently accurate news with decent breadth from ad supported media. There are occasional bright spots but the system that finances our TV news is capricious, biased, and panders to the lowest common denominator.
IMO, the BBC produces the best TV news product available in English so I'd prefer their imperfect system. At least news is the product on their news channels. (right wingers, have at it... and yeah, I do know there are ads on BBC America and BBC News Intl. )
The whole story reminded me of the Wes Mendell rant on the Studio 60 pilot episode. Too bad that show too was eventually stripped of its edge. In my opinion, the best news show format is PTI and it's unfortunate that it's a sports show. To be completely unbiased there needs to be two people playing "devil's advocate" for a liberal and conservative bias. The two should debate for a predetermined period of time until a bell goes off and they move onto the next topic.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The conservative position was entirely out of respect for the dead and their families. It was the lieberals, such as yourself, that politicized it and tried to make out this was not so. Only one media outlet in the whole country even bothered to ask for and report the conservative side of the story. Hint: it was not the Globe and Liberal, the National Liberal, the Toronto Liberal, nor the Communist Broadcasting Corporation.
Yes, after more than a decade of lieberal mis-rule, the conservatives only won a minority. Take a closer look at who is doing the counting.
As far as the networks are concerned, you are not the customer, you are the product. Think about it.
The bias towards the left is soooo amazingly palpable that it turns a lot of viewers off. Ever wonder why Fox news has sooo many viewers compared to the rest? Because people are sick of hearing about how America sucks all the time. If there is a positive economic indicator, the MSM(CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, etc...) will twist it to somehow be negative and Bush's fault. When Clinton was in office, the MSM would grasp at anything to report as a positive economically. And that is just one example. Take the unquestioned "humans are the cause for global warming", "guns kill people, not other people", "religious right is responsible for all the ills in America", "America's wealthy are the cause for all the ills in the world thus making terrorist attack on civilians somehow justified", "macabre lovefest with anything Brittney, Lohan, Paris, pretty white girl/woman killed", etc... and the news is unwatchable.
It's actually very similar to the dumbing down of other networks like ESPN. ESPN is unwatchable anymore because rather than report the sports new, they have Stu Scott trying to "ghetto" up the news, and they would rather concentrate on the Patriots 90% of the time when discussing football, rather than talk about the other 31 teams in the league. Much like the MSM, there are protected teams/figures(regular news, it's Clinton and the Democrats), like the patriots, Indy, Brady, Peyton Manning, LT, etc...
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
TV is the modern version of Panem et circenses, specifically Circus games (as in Gladiators) replaced by American Idol, Top model and pseudo news about Paris and Britney.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
The investment may not be worth it to you but...I get great qualtiy, original programming on my HD channels. National Geographic HD and Discovery HD most always have something interesting on. We also have PBS HD and A&E HD which are both good too. There is good quality programming out there. It's just that the S/N ratio is so high.
Everyone can complain all they want about the liberal media and Fox News and such. The bottom line is TV news is just another form of media. It's a business like anything else. Regardless of their political leanings, they are going to cover what people want covered, or better yet, what they think people want covered. It's really as simple as that.
Maybe I don't want to hear about what Paris did this week, but you can bet there is a good majority of people who will watch a TV news show just to find out.
The problem is that "journalists" are idiots.
I could go on for quite a while about TV news, but to what end. I just don't watch much of anything calling itself "news" from the mainstream news media anymore.
My epiphany came about 1995 or so. It seems that a former (1970s vintage) acquaintance committed some dastardly deed. It was the rage in the national news for a while. A short time later I was contacted by a reporter from "BigMedia". They wanted to interview me about my acquaintance. Fool! I agreed.
A reporter came to my house. We talked for 30 minutes or more. What showed up in the newspapers was a single statement, taken out of context, presented in the most unfavorable light, essentially libeling me and my acquaintance.
I called my lawyer. He laughed at my story. He said: "They are in the entertainment industry, not the News industry. Learn your lesson and get over it".
He also suggested that I never talk to the media without a witness and without getting paid in advance for it.
I've learned my lesson.
I refer you all to Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky and Herman. It's a book, but there's a documentary as well that you can view on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHJHGOE8MIs
Actually, it starts with "I" and rhymes with "brawn"
News is about the only thing I regularly watch on TV - network, local, and the weekly magazines.
Cant pee, cant get it up, will have anemia and permanent heartburn. Im going to end it at 40 then.
Notwithstanding the blatant sensationalism, overwhelming and intrusive advertising, advertisements disquised as "stories" (TV shows, movies, etc), stupid teasers to the next story which turned out to be unimportant, non-event paris/nicole/spears news, and corporate bias and control of content.
I actually fell asleep during Dan Rather's broadcast. It is the only time I ever fell asleep in front of the TV.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
North East West South (NEWS) media ain't what it use to be just like the old gray mare ... put it out to pasture.
....
.... ....
NEWS as the cutting edge sword of the public's republic has been beaten down into a dull rusting plow of corporatist values. NEWS (paper/broadcast/...) now serves to entertain the foolish, petty, and silly or maintain the delusional public vision of democracy, capitalism, patriotism, religion
The housing market crash-scam with predatory mortgages was identified by many of US a few years ago. The 1980 decade S&L and predatory loans, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_Loan_crisis. US tax payer bail out the 1980's S&L, now the 2005 banks, then the 2020 financial... while the poor-public citizen pays with homes, savings, then tax dollars to make USAll poorer.
The above pattern-model can be applied to Domino-Theory::Vietnam-Iraq::Terrorist-Fear
The above pattern-model can be applied to 911-Surprise
The above pattern-model can be applied to Tech__Bubble
The above pattern-model can be applied to
Corporatist, Big-Clergy, and Politicians are either stupid or duplicitous in crime, I think.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
There is nothing wrong with TV news. It's not journalism, it's entertainment. Like almost everything else on TV, it's content is designed to capture ratings.
I don't know if this series you're referring to is a spinoff of the movie with the same name or not. However, you forcibly reminded me of a Usenet post that I saw on mn.general (Minnesota General interest, obviously) years ago. It was patterned after comic Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a Redneck if.." bit that he still does as part of his standup routine.
Naturally, it was titled "You might be a Minnesotan if...". Among other gems, it included this line:
It's a much funnier line when you read it in the context of the whole post. A quick Google of the phrase turned up several archived copies of it online. One can be found here. Here's a sampling taken at random:
Who says Americans can't poke fun at themselves? :)
I never had the opportunity to work directly with John as he worked the Dateline side and I was strictly on "news." I worked as an editor for NBC Nightly News and Today for over 8 years. You can see some of my work here. Like John, I was laid off in one of their "downsizing" operations.
John writes in his article about how there was a lot of interest in finding stories in the emotional heart of America and no interest in stretching the understanding of most Americans and that is true of Dateline as well as the News division. John was a very well-known journalist hired by Dateline to do serious stories. He is right to have felt frustrated. There is zero interest in informing Americans what is truly happening and the best example is the 2000 election.
NBC breathlessly announced that there was a "Constitutional Crisis" in the election and that unless this whole Florida recount was figured out it would turn into a real crisis. Then NBC sent cameras to get unique angles of election officials scrutinizing punch-card ballots and followed the court cases. Then, rather than inform America about what is written in the US Constitution, NBC and the other networks passively stood by while the US Supreme Court, in a completely extra-Constitutional step decided to hear the case of Bush v Gore and then decided to select who would be the next President of the United States.
Americans' lack of understanding about their own Constitution was recently exemplified to me by a recently-retired naval Commander who told me that she thought that this Electoral College thing for choosing the President should be changed and that we should get our Congress to change it. I told her that our Constitution did not provide for the popular election of a President and that the States were in charge of that. The States choose how electors shall be chosen and most have a "Winner Takes All" approach but some apportion some electors according to how the popular vote went. I suggested that she ask her Governor and her State representatives to change how they chose their electors.
NBC never reported that, when the US Supreme Court got involved, it was taking away the right of the State of Florida to apportion its electors. The top court that should have decided in this case was the Florida Supreme Court and, if they didn't decide the case or if a recount would have taken too long, the matter would have been thrown to the US Congress to decide whether or not to accept any electors from Florida, to accept the electors from all states save Florida or to decide the matter themselves.
There was no crisis and NBC reporting that there was is another example of a story being sensationalized for ratings, which seems to be more important than NBC actually informing the viewers of the facts and what is really going on.
Furthermore, none of the blogs I read, nor any of the radio or television stations I watched actually informed the public as to the facts of the Constitution. I did read one book well after Bush v Gore was settled stating that what the Supreme Court did was extralegal. I noted that the New York Times did have a story about how Florida's Supreme Court had final say and then they ignored this fact as soon as the case was heard by the Supreme Court of the US.
So I think it's safe to say that everyone got the real story wrong.
I'm really happy to see that John has gainful employment. I'm still looking for something full-time
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ironic
The only response the eyeball owners can have is to try to wrest control of the TV. Now, we can do that with DVD's, netflix,and the internet, where what YOU want is the only thing that matters, and you are Ad-free (mostly). You can get a DVR, and cull the TV wheat from the AD chaff, and you are again Ad-free. Both circumstances are totally against the idea of the mass media networks. They still live in 1967, where we own the transmitter, you own the receivers, and you watch what we put on when we put it on, no input from you, thanks. In 2008, I slept through Letterman yesterday, saw the monologue On-Line, using a series of tubes, and it was when *I* was ready. We very rarely watch any primetime TV "live", and let the DVR catch it, for later watching and zapping at our convenience. If you don't rent it from a Cable or Satellite Company, a standalone DVR is very hard to find. Out of production Sony or LG is all you can get, if you don't want to do a full MythTV setup. Even then, it's not easy. You'd think there would be a market for off the air DVR's, since HDTV is free and uncompressed if you can get it old school with an antenna. I would think that the mass media would scream "free hd" from the same rooftops which would sprout antennae. Yet there is no market for them......one might think that the RIAA, in conjunction with a few big companies, are trying to stifle any sort of "possession" of digital media, even if it is totally locked down and encrypted like my Sony HDD-250. If the Sat/Cable company owns the box, then the 30 second skip can be disabled, and they can limit what/how long you archive, fair use be damned. A standalone recorder you own can't be controlled in this way. You have two warring disc formats, either of which "works" for 99% of the target market, but that's also "on hold". The big boys managed to saddle HDMI, a good idea, with HDCP, which is just a way to keep us in their world of 1967, with them controlling all the media. Sorry boys, the internet wins. My kids don't buy CD's, it's all on a player of some sort. They don't care about 'albums ', and carry around entire collections in their pockets. They IM friends and check out "you tube" videos, not wait for "american bandstand". Still, the mass media nets have one ace, they are producing the only new HD content, and still in a limited way, are in 1967 there....and then they piss off the writers and that one bit of HDTV is cut-off. (repeats are repeats even in 1080i). I have a degree in old style broadcasting and film and my knowledge is now a quaint set of "old ways". While those who run the industry still try to cling to the old ways, and have some limited success limiting audience options, the tidal wave that is the internet has pulled out....way out, and ask the Tsunami victims what one should do when the tide pulls out a half mile. Big media is running toward the ocean, thinking they will get free fish, not running for the hills.
NPR is all fluff, opinion pieces and ads nowadays. Cokie Roberts is a megastar, some dopey-voiced guy talks about 'underwriting support' every 6 minutes. Any claim it had as an alternative to the major news outlets has been gone for years.
The Cold War started (or at least massively escalated) because that idiot dropped a 57 Megaton hydrogen bomb! What a bluff! And only two years after agreeing with the rest of the world to halt all atmospheric nuclear testing. I'm sorry but the potential to generate a 4.6 KM fireball suggests an enemy with some real firepower.
We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
Particularly when he has scientists, artists, or political or military leaders on. You get a full hour of uninterrupted, expert conversation on a topic...the opposite of a soundbite.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Well there sure are a lot of people here who assume what they consider art is the correct while any other taste is at best irrelevant to a news broadcast. Well the fact of the matter is Cobain and Britney (not so much paris) have sold a lot of records, for shits and giggles we'll say 1 million. So when they die, to one degree or another that could potentially effect one million people. Now is an event, regardless of sector, that affects 1 million people not news worthy? Well of course it is, and I do understand the points of view trying to be made. It's the context, style and amount of coverage that needs some serious correction. Yadda, yadda, yadda... You get my point.
So until then let's support NPR and PBS, or let us at least not mock the people who do watch and consider discussions of the arts relevant.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
The media is too concerned with being fair. Factual news reporting lends itself to supporting one or another ideology, because that's the way facts are--they're specific and exclusive. There are WMDs, or there are not WMDs. There was a blow job or there wasn't a blowjob. The guy either knew or he didn't. If the vaccine reduced infection rates by 83% then it is effective.
Yet, many incredibly stupid "controversies" are perpetuated by the media because journalists improperly substitute fairness for objectivity as their guiding doctrine. Consider the recent treatment of evolution and global warming. Rather than focus on the objective scientific news and controversies of these topics, much of the news media (especially broadcast) focuses on the political machinations. Thus you get a situation where a few op-ed writers and lobbyists are portrayed in the same light (remember, gotta be fair) as thousands of highly trained and knowledgable scientists, just because they disagree with them.
This is one reason the Daily Show is so popular as a source of news. Because they are a comedy show, they are not afraid to call bullshit on bullshit and speak frankly. In fact they have to, because a waffled punchline is not funny.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The thing is, it's not only ghetto kids.
I believe that to be mainly a product of pop culture for young Black Americans today. Many years ago Black Americans wore their knowledge and intelligence as a badge of pride, today they wear their ignorance as a badge of pride. Perhaps the social engineering - resulting from AFDC and prejudice in jobs/schools, etc., - whereby a father figure can frequently be found to be missing in the homes of lower socioeconomic Black American youth.
Human culture for _millenia_ respected intelligence.
I strongly disagree with that statement and believe history presents us with almost limitless examples to the contrary.
Due to Da Vinci's bastard birth (during Renaissance times), he was limited to only three occupations: artist, sculptor or pharmacist (that period's traveling country doctor). Thorstein Veblen was a truly far-sighted genius and thinker, being the first to utilize Darwinian principles in the explanations of people's behavior in the area of social economics. (Please see Rick Tilman's outstanding scholarly work on the subject.)
Your trite description of the horrors of the dark ages - something which we have again entered (please review Jane Jacobs' Dark Age Ahead for an excellent example) - does a major disservice to that period.
I would strongly suggest the explosion of the sciences in the 19th and 20th century (with the exception of the 2nd half of the 20th century - due to the GI Bill in America - please see Edward Humes excellent work Over Here for a detailed analysis of the social benefits of that legislation) was in spite of the obstacles presented to all but the elites in obtaining further and advanced eduction. When people of truly advanced intelligence happen upon the human scene, they generally wise up and hide among us (William Sidris and several others come immediately to mind).
Greatest thinkers in the Western Hemisphere IMO:
Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Darwin, Thorstein Veblen, Martin Luther King, Michael Parenti, Catherine Austin Fitts
The news is supposed to report WTF is going on: just the facts. Any attempt to make the public feel or think a certain way about current events is propaganda. IMHO, it's probably best that this twit left NBC. It's too bad that he didn't take most of the staff and upper management along with him.
SBS World News and George Negus' Dateline are available online, and make all other news shows pale in comparison.
cobains death was not surprising honestly.
Now I will skip the britney spears part because I agree the amount of coverage was idiotic. even the masses agreed with that yet it was still pumped.
Elvis was in a different category compared to cobain.
I loved his music, but to call it a major story is definitely not something I would agree with
His career was short, he was in a small genre of rock, he was honestly a bigger star after his death.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I prefer CNNNN myself, if we're talking about the failure of American news.
Small genre of rock? I'd say over 75% of what you hear on modern rock stations today is a direct descendant of the chugging, pseudo-punk sound he pioneered on Nevermind. (Admittedly, STP's Core--released a year later--is another major influence. A lot of people say Pearl Jam as well, but--though they are an awesome band--they really didn't inspire much beyond a few early imitators... notably Seven Mary Three and a little later, Creed.)
Granted, a lot of the music nowadays is simplistic or watered-down tripe, but there are some real gems in there, too. Nirvana KILLED hair metal/"stadium" metal. After Nevermind, it just about vanished off the face of the Earth. For the past 16+ years, nearly every new rock band has used some form of the dirty, chugging, non-melodic/very rhythm-heavy guitar style. It's gotten more staccato and dynamically compressed (and, IMO, soulless) in recent years (this is at least partially due to the nu metal scene brought to the forefront by Korn in the mid/late 90s) but the influence is still unmistakable. Maybe it existed long before Nirvana, I dunno, but pre-1991, you just didn't hear that kind of rough, non-melodic shit--not even Hendrix reached that level of (as he would call it) "earth"--and yet ever since Nevermind, it's been absolutely everywhere.
You are comparing what has resulted since his death with his importance at the time of his death. There is a major difference.
It is all in retrospect you realize his importance to modern rock and the changeout from 80's metal. At the time of his death none of that was realized and therefore the news of his death was not equivalent to someone like Lennon whom was an agent of societal change and had been for a decade plus.
At the time of his death, grunge rock was pretty small and uninfluenced. It became influential and has roots in more modern rock, but that still doesnt change the time line.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
You think that the grunge sound was small and uninfluenced in 1994? Wow... where were you?
I can tell you where I was--in a middle school (and I live in Florida--i.e., pretty damned far from Seattle), wearing flannel on a DAILY basis unless it was over 90 degrees out, listening to Pearl Jam, Candlebox, STP, Bush, and (of course) Nirvana. The nu rock wave was still in its infancy, and I don't remember any 80s-style music being the least bit popular at this point. Perhaps things were different where you lived...
Please provide specifics instead of pointing me to something vague like a "research class in college". After all, how do you know I won't pick a class where Democracy Now! is used as a source of good journalism? While you're at it, please point me to specific instances of some of these "neutral", "reliable" sources which don't "reek of political bias".
Digital Citizen
You were the pre-emo kid in your middle school. You were an insignificant minority (hey guess where emo came from...)
I am sorry, but the cultural relevance at the time of kurts death was insignificant at best, the fact you were in middle school at the time pretty much codifies that in that you think he really was that instantly important. the relevance he did have on pop culture was significant, but spread out over a much longer time period.
but regardless of his cultural influences, his death was minor news story despite a bunch of middle schoolers doing the flannel thing (i had the same wardrobe, but it did not make a cultural revolution in the same magnitude of lennon, hendrix or other greats)
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
You were the pre-emo kid in your middle school. You were an insignificant minority
Um, no. I was the average, somewhat geeky, popularity-seeking kid at my school. I was emulating what was BY FAR the most common tastes amongst the non-black, non-wigger kids (is there a less-offensive term that means "trying extremely hard to act black" ?) at the time. Granted, this was a magnet school, which meant there were a bunch of rich, gifted, mostly white kids crammed in with a bunch of poor, delinquent, mostly black kids (this isn't a racist comment; it's the truth and it's an inevitable consequence of societal racism and the magnet school concept), so that might have polarized things and made the grunge aesthetic a little more pronounced than it would have otherwise been.
Nevertheless, a few years later in (a fairly typical) high school, when the flannel was a lot rarer, Nirvana was still extremely popular and it wasn't too rare to hear kids mention Kurt's death in the passing. Fine, maybe the death itself wasn't as earthshaking as Lennon or Hendrix, but I can safely say it was the most earthshaking thing SINCE those deaths. And Cobain's contribution to musical contribution is on par with Hendrix's (though probably not Lennon's.) I have no idea how long it took the evening news to care about Kurt; all I'm saying was that, amongst every single person my age who was of the same socioeconomic background, the effect was immediate and sustained.
Oh yes... emo sucks, fuck you very much. Grunge and gothic rock (see: AFI circa late 90s--NOT their recent shit) are completely separate genres. Emo is completely soulless and hollow and it was descended from soulless and hollow-sounding "emotional" punk, NOT grunge. What you hear on the radio today (the non-emo stuff) is grunge merged with nu metal with occasional classic-thrash elements thrown in. I'm not a huge fan of it... but holy shit man, anything is better than emo.
Completely OT: I'd have to say that the only truly interesting stuff on popular radio in the past few years has been from System of a Down (and now Serj Tankian solo) and--trust me, it PAINS me to say this--Linkin Park. SoaD should be self-explanatory--it's simply the most powerful, political, creative shit on mainstream radio... LP, I'd say, it just about the ONLY band I've heard that's manage to fuse hip hop rhythms into rock and not sound make it sound like anemic nu metal (e.g... err, just about everyone nowadays) or complete shit (e.g. Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit.) AFI has some interesting sounds on their last 2 albums, but I'm not even sure you can call it rock anymore. I wish someone would pick up where The Art of Drowning left off. (And before you mention it--their image is extremely emo, but their music never was.) Honorable mentions to Green Day's last album, Coheed and Cambria, and Tool.
OT of the OT rant: You know, when Nickleback's first big single (Leader of Men) hit the charts, I had a LOT of hope for them... it really was a neat little song. Quickly thereafter I realized I just wanted them to shut the fuck up... now here I am 5 years later, STILL waiting for them to shut the fuck up. Stations around here still play that goddamned Rockstar. Swore off radio completely for a while (in part because of Nickleback specifically), but my CD player broke and just haven't the time... ok, done ranting.
And Cobain's contribution to musical contribution
On a related note, I should probably sleep now.