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| Government | |
| The Media: The Illusion of Coverage | |
| 2014-01-26 | |
In Washington, journalism is founded on diversity. This is a good thing, the dangers of a homogeneous press corps being obvious. Thus in the newsroom of the Washington Post, for example, you find white reporters who all think the same things, black reporters who all think the same things as the white reporters, Jewish, Asian, gay, lesbian, Hispanic, and undecided reporters, who all think the same things. Diversity is their strength. In fact all across America you see journalistic diversity. We have a wide diversity of newspapers, television stations, radio outlets, all owned by the same few corporations, which all have the same interests. Diversity is their strength too. The principle characteristic of the media is that they don't cover much of anything. They do cover themselves (which doesn't contradict the foregoing statement). If some bubble-headed babble-blonde--I think there is one called Katie Couric--moves from one indistinguishable network to another, we hear about it for weeks. I once saw on television someone called Peers, or maybe Piers, Morgan, who displayed the incisive intelligence of a platypus. His ratings were said to be falling: maybe there is hope for the US public after all. Anyway, for some reason this was news, that and how Bill O'Reilly and several helmet-haired Republican women at Fox News are doing. The media are the story. Reporters cover each other like Spandex pants, but--I'm serious, think about this-- they barely glance at most of the government. When did you last see coverage of HUD? The Bureau of Indian Affairs? The Department of Transportation? FAA? EPA? We get the occasional press release from these, but little else. No one knows what lurks in the bureaucratic shadows, but I promise it costs a lot. Actually there is very little coverage of things that get a lot of coverage: the White House, DoD, and State. At the White House everything is tightly stage-managed, and a reporter who asks awkward questions never gets called on again. | |
| Posted by:Pappy |
| #1 The actual president is incidental. In fact, he is actually viewed as an impediment by his handlers, who think that the less known about him, the better. Note that the first thing they do is hide his scholastic record and SATs. Fred has definitely been reading the Burg. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-01-26 03:05 |