Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Climate of Denial — Al Gore

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

Al Gore has a very good article in the current Rolling Stone. Get it! Get 5 and leave them around your favorite hang-out places.

He starts by recalling the the “professional” wrestling shows of his youth.

…the most unusual and in some ways most interesting character in these dramas was the referee: Whenever the bad guy committed a gross and obvious violation of the “rules” — such as they were — like using a metal folding chair to smack the good guy in the head, the referee always seemed to be preoccupied with one of the cornermen, or looking the other way. Yet whenever the good guy — after absorbing more abuse and unfairness than any reasonable person could tolerate — committed the slightest infraction, the referee was all over him. The answer to the question “Is it real?” seemed connected to the question of whether the referee was somehow confused about his role: Was he too an entertainer?

Photo Gallery: 11 extreme-weather signs the climate crisis is real

That is pretty much the role now being played by most of the news media in refereeing the current wrestling match over whether global warming is “real,” and whether it has any connection to the constant dumping of 90 million tons of heat-trapping emissions into the Earth’s thin shell of atmosphere every 24 hours.

This article appears in the July 7, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available on newsstands and in the digital archive on June 24.

Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it’s a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.

How Obama gave up on climate change legislation

The referee — in this analogy, the news media — seems confused about whether he is in the news business or the entertainment business. Is he responsible for ensuring a fair match? Or is he part of the show, selling tickets and building the audience? The referee certainly seems distracted: by Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen, the latest reality show — the list of serial obsessions is too long to enumerate here.

Do read:

Climate of Denial

Can science and the truth withstand the merchants of poison?

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Tags: Climate Change, media, propaganda
Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Media | Comments Off

No Talking Climate Heads

Saturday, December 22nd, 2007

It’s a sick crew running the media ship….

The League of Conservation Voters generated quite a bit of buzz on environmental blogs this week after it launched a new campaign pressing America’s most-watched political reporters to bring up global warming more often on all those influential Sunday talk shows. The group reviewed videotape of more than 120 interviews of presidential contenders by Chris Wallace, Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Wolf Blitzer and Bob Schieffer this year.

In the 2,275 questions posed, the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” were used three times, and a total of 24 questions indirectly touched on climate or related issues, the group said.

Here’s the League’s count of 2007 talk-show questions mentioning climate:

- Wolf Blitzer, CNN: 1 out of 311
- Tim Russert, NBC: 0 out of 664
- Bob Scheiffer, CBS: 0 out of 212
- George Stephanopoulos, ABC: 0 out of 661
- Chris Wallace, FOX: 2 out of 427

And they aren’t even counting Chris Matthews atrocious Hardball….

No Talking Climate Heads

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Posted in Climate Change, Media | Comments Off

The Master Narrative

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

Jon Carroll, long time columnist for the SF Chronicle, picks up a Jay Rosen article on “master narratives” and the press.

In standard coverage of political campaigns, where one goal is always to appear nonpartisan and above the fray, the master narrative has for a long time been winning— who’s going to win, who seems to be winning, what the candidates are doing to win, how much money it takes to win, how the primary in South Carolina is critical to winning and so on. Reporters call this the horse race, one of the rare occasions on which they have aptly named their own master narrative and recognized it as a story machine— almost an appliance for cooking news….

Carroll gives a good intro, quoting extensively from Rosen.

You can read the whole Rosen here.

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FOX Debate: Kucinich, Gravel and Biden

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Look, I know a lot of you admire Dennis Kucinich. I have a pocket of it myself. But when asked why he doesn’t get more respect and more of a following from his natural constituents, the reasoning he demonstrates in explaining why he will be on the FAUX Debate sort of explains it all.

Chris Bowers: MyDD

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Posted in Democrats, Media | Comments Off

Narrative Style

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

“A COKE AND A SMILE: As we’ve told you, the game has never been clearer. When it comes to presidential coverage, the mainstream press corps is now a Republican entity. They create “hero tales” for Republican hopefuls—and “demon tales” for the Dems. Even a mediocre Republican like Fred Thompson gets hero tales from the Post (and from Hardball). But if you’re a Dem, the rules are reversed. Al Gore has won an Oscar; been nominated for a Nobel; and has seen his brilliant film change the world’s discussion of warming. But so what? At the Post and the Times he’s still too f*cking fat. At the Post, he’s still just too annoying.”

This is a sampler from Bob Somerby’s dissection of the day — of Matthews, Milbank, Gerth.

Spend a while.

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Lyin’ Lou Dobbs

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

What a fine thing to read hanging high on the first business page of the NY Times. Dave Leonhardt does a take-down of Lyin’ Lou Dobbs and the 3,000 illegal immigrants with leprosy in 3 years theme he has been roaring for a while.

I have been somewhat taken aback about how shameless he has been during the whole dispute, so I spent some time reading transcripts from old episodes of “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” The way he handled leprosy, it turns out, is not all that unusual.

For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality. He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

Fictional Lou

My only quibble would be his lede in which he says: “The whole controversy involving Lou Dobbs and leprosy started with a “60 Minutes” segment a few weeks ago.”

The “whole controversy” started when Dobbs began bashing immigrants for joy and ratings. It was finally taken notice of by “those who count” in the 60 Minutes piece and now Dobbs is getting some attention from those other than white supremicists where he is a big favorite. [No links provided. Get 'em yourselves....]

John Amato at Crooks and Liars has a wee follow up, suggesting that the Sunday Talk Shows all have sequels in which the claims made are fact-checked! Wowser, that would be a show worth watching!

Matt Yglesias wonders why Dobbs is being singled out. There are a lot of other liars on teeveee and they are getting a free pass. Lot’s of interesting comments following the post, as well.

I’d just say for myself, pile on when there is opportunity, another may be a long time in coming. Sure Dobbs is sticking up for working class folks, so did Dennis Kearney’s Workingman’s Party in San Francisco in the 1870s. Good, stick up for them. Racist attacks on other workers is not the way to do it.

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Missing Soldiers

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

The morning cable news has been treating the 3 missing US soldiers in Iraq in ways usually reserved for missing toddlers — lavish, emotional, “intense, massive, exhausting,” repeated clips of interviews filled with hope — the commanding officers, the ravaged relatives (with pictures — in uniform and in chubby childhood cowboy outfits), the “Stay tuned! Updates Next!

Excuse me, what is going on here? Over three thousand three hundred and thirty soldiers have gone missing — missing from our lives, missing from their planned futures. Over one hundred thousand Iraqis are gone. Gone, gone, gone. Why is it that these 3 get the “treatment?”

Since they are not known to be dead there is some hope they will be found. I understand that. But there is something else at work here, something prurient, some rotted expression of human caring — not visible for four years– that covers up a palpitating desire to be present at the discovery — alive would be fine, but dead, and tortured, would be just as good, better maybe. Much much higher adrenaline spike, ratings spike, ad sales support. Color me cynical but that’s what I am getting from this.

I hope the men are found, safe and unharmed but I have to wonder: what aren’t all these searching soldiers doing that they were doing last week? How many doors are being busted through in angry suspicion? What sign of weakness is the inability to find them sending out?

I hope they are found but this saturation attempt to show the American people that “we never leave our comrades behind,” “we are a noble and virtuous army,” has a loud hollow booming sound to it. I don’t need minute by minute speculation, low angle shots of dusty boots, guns at the ready, squint eyed, firm jawed proof that their comrades care. I don’t need the near sexual excitement in the timbre of the news readers’ voices.

How I miss the flat, smoke filled (Camels) voice of John Cameron Swazey, the suppressed emotion of Edward R. Murrow (Camels) …

That’s all for now. Good night, and good luck…

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All In One Boat

Archive for the ‘Media’ Category