…There are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning. I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called “World War II”. Let’s start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn’t look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn’t get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons. I wouldn’t even mind the lack of originality if they weren’t so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we’re supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be…
Amazing. Read the whole thing at the link.
Posted: July 13, 2010 at 8:59 pm.
Sarah Palin releases a web video in which she pays women to dress like bears and pretend to maul socialism or something.
Cable news covers it ad nauseum, and justifies its coverage by saying everyone’s talking about it, even though “everyone” literally only means the people who are talking about how much everyone else is talking about it. The discussion of the discussion is then discussed on Politico, which then uses the completely self-referential dialogue to point out how Sarah Palin is rehabilitating her image and winning the day.
Meanwhile, it is apparently pretty much okay in America to shoot a man laying on the ground in the back because you’re too frightened to check to make sure you’re inappropriately tazing him rather than killing him.
If only Oscar Grant had been savvy enough to release a web ad…
Posted: July 9, 2010 at 8:02 pm.
For some time now, I’ve held the hypothesis that, to the majority of the American population, if not the majority of the population of Earth, male characters are automatically more likable than female characters. It seemed to me, based on my experience on the Interwebs, that many male characters were given a pass for deplorable behavior while female characters tended to be hated for the vague sin of being “a bitch…”
Posted: June 28, 2010 at 11:00 am.
Posted: April 24, 2010 at 11:24 am.
I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I’m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.
Christiane Amanpour: CNN practiced self-censorship
Posted: March 19, 2010 at 5:08 pm.
Katha Pollitt, April 1991
Posted: March 2, 2010 at 2:35 pm.
Posted: September 17, 2009 at 3:49 pm.
ABC News confirms that it will chase any right-wing “fight” even if it’s baseless; even if it’s “unfounded.” In reporting those fights, ABC News will purposefully exclude Democrat voices from the story. And ABC News, while acknowledging a fight is ”unfounded,” will allow partisan Republicans to blame the White House for the “controversy.”
R.I.P., indeed.
Posted: September 10, 2009 at 7:39 am.
During the week of August 10-16, the topic of health care, and specifically the politics and the protests of health care, accounted for a staggering 62 percent of all cable news coverage, according to the Pew Research Center’s weekly survey. My guess is that you would be hard-pressed to find a single week during the run-up to the Iraq war when liberal anti-war protests accounted for just 6 percent of the cable news coverage.
Why the gaping disparity? And how come Dean’s anti-war anger was out of bounds, but mini-mob anger is perfectly acceptable? How come liberal anti-war protesters were shunned by the press, but the mini-mobs are showered with incessant coverage? It’s because apparently when angry — and overwhelmingly white — conservatives protest, they come attached with a direct line to the American psyche. Liberals, though, most certainly do not.
Bottom line: Liberal protesters don’t tell us anything about the mood of America. But angry right-wingers do, according to the press.
Media: Angry right-wingers are important; angry libs are annoying | Media Matters for America
Posted: August 26, 2009 at 3:49 pm.
…Journalists would no doubt say that it isn’t really their job to ferret out the “truth.” It is their job to report “facts.” If Palin says that Obama intends to euthanize her child, they report it. If Limbaugh says that Obama’s healthcare plan smacks of Nazism, they report it. And if riled citizens begin shouting down their representatives, they report it, and report it, and report it. The more noise and the bigger the controversy, the greater the coverage. This creates a situation in which not only is the truth subordinate to lies, but one in which shameless lies are actually privileged over reasoned debate.
Don’t think the militants don’t know this and take full advantage of it. They know that the media, especially the so-called liberal mainstream media — which are hardly liberal if assessed honestly — refrain from attempting to referee arguments for fear that they will be accused by the right of taking sides. So rather than be battered, the media — and I am talking about the respectable media, not the carnival barkers on cable — increasingly strive for the simplest sort of balance rather than real objectivity. They marshal facts, but they don’t seek truth. They behave as if every argument must be heard and has equal merit, when some are simply specious. That is how global warming, WMD and “end of life” counseling have become part of silly reportorial ping-pong at best and badly misleading information at worst.
‘Truth’ vs. ‘facts’ from America’s media — latimes.com
Posted: August 25, 2009 at 11:01 am.
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©1977–2008, Jessie Rauch-Dickson. All rights reserved, all wrongs reversed.
