Thumb-Suckers
Via Random Thoughts 101:
“One of the great pressures we’re facing in journalism now is, it’s a lot cheaper to hire thumb-suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters.â€
- Former CNN president Walter Isaacson, on the state of independent journalism after 9/11 and in the run-up to the Iraq war, on “Bill Moyers Journal†program “Buying the Warâ€
As far as I’m concerned, only 1/24th of the daily CNN lineup is watchable, and that’s at noon when they run an hour off CNN International. That branch of CNN actually covers stories around the world in-depth. Much like BBC World News (which I also watch) does. Fox News rarely has actual “news” reporting. Ditto MSNBC.
There is a constituency out there that isn’t interested in cross-talk and the constant repetition of “let me finish”. There is an audience out there for in-depth news reporting from around the world. That constituency is not properly being served, however. Not by the cable news channels, which have the time, if not the resources, to do it.
STEEL Says:April 27th, 2007 at 10:54 am
The recent PBS Frontline show on the subject was a real eye opener. The complicity of the press in the run up to the war should be a major front page story in all the media. Of course it will not be.
hank kaczmarek Says:April 27th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Many here would think I watch all the shows on FNC like O’Reilly and Hannity.
I can’t, because I’m one of those” that isn’t interested in cross-talk and the constant repetition of “let me finish†” That drives me nuts, no matter who’s talking with whom. It shows that the people talking as well as the people hosting the show have little to no respect for each other. Another sad commentary on Journalism in this country these days.
When I’m on a Cruise Ship, I get CNN International 24/7–It is good news with in-depth coverage. BBC is also on the cruise ships, and it’s the regular, not BBC America.
Mike from Grand Island Says:April 27th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
When I lived in Europe for a couple of years I was happy to have CNN intl. It amazed me what a different product the CNN USA is from the CNN intl. The intl product has content while the USA product was fluff and driven by press releases and a lot of group think. For example, I never really bought into the whole dot.com thing so it just pissed me off to no end that no one in the media ever stopped to analyze the situation and compare it to history. “Oh you don’t understand, it’s the new economy and I’m 22 years old and you know nothing,” the experts would say. Meanwhile, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a great little book about the great crash of 1929 (the big thing then was radio) that was a must read to predict what would happen. And let’s hope for a soft landing in the housing market - that happended before too — anyone ever hear of Goldome and Empire realty credit corp? Maybe Neil Bush’s (yeah that Bush team) silverado S&L?
Anyway, we Americans are really taken for a ride because we’ve told our “leadership” (public, private, business, whatever) that we’ll take whatever they feed us. A trillion dollars in Iraq buys a hell of a lot of generators for erie county’s water system. If our federal government wasn’t wasting our grandchildren’s money on war we could actually get some services for our money. But here in the USA we’re on our own. Our own cowboy independence streak works, and is played, against us. There’s a sucker born ever minute.
Go SABRE!
Terry Says:April 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Yes…any BBC product seems much better than the junk we get
Tatonka Says:April 27th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Read Digby on what appened to Ashleigh Banfield.
Ike Says:April 28th, 2007 at 12:48 am
You need a subscription to The Economist…badly