By my way of thinking, the late night talk show hosts that are being bumped off the air are far more than comedians. They’re filling a void created by the loss of columnists due to the death of the American newspaper industry. As such, they are providing a valuable service as the media landscape continues shifting from print to cyber.
In that light, aren’t Kimmel and Colbert as much journalists as Mencken or Breslin? Aren’t they generally truthful in their presentations and due all the same First Amendment protections normally extended to newspapers? Won’t the giant media conglomerates refusal to fight for free speech rights only lead to demands that the monopolies, 6 of which control 90% of the American media, need to be broken up? Didn’t “merger madness” get us here, and isn’t it time to begin the push for a new wave of trust busting, leading to an increased number of media jobs from more and not fewer companies providing a broader spectrum of news and information?
Shouldn’t the 6 American media monopolies be as concerned with protecting the Constitution as they are with protecting their bottom lines?
Oh sure, it’ll take a while, but won’t the worm eventually turn?
Every day it’s the same. Netanyahu, turns Gaza to dust, with the apparent intention of leaving nothing alive. Putin bombards Ukraine, slaughtering thousands of innocents, kidnapping any children that happen to be left alive.
In the U.S., gun violence remains the leading cause of death among children and teens while Trump, sucks his thumb and orders more gold leaf for the Oval, calling in federal troops to attack the effect while ignoring the cause.
Tyranny, it would seem, thrives on chaos. Like two meaningless summits followed by the FBI raiding the private home of John Bolton, in Bethesda, on the same day the Dept. of Justice is releasing at least some of the Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee. Fascinating.
It’s been said that if you frighten people enough, they’ll let you do almost anything. First though, you”ll have to muzzle the legitimate press – or at least convince most of the people that legitimate journalism is really fake news while blowing so much smoke that nobody can remember what you were up to just a couple of days ago.
Epstein, who? Remember him? The guy who allegedly hanged himself in a federal prison cell while the guards were taking a break and the camera mysteriously broke down, akin to the 18 minute gap in Nixon’s Watergate tapes. Remember Rose Mary Woods and the 18 minute gap? We’ve seen this one before. But Richard Nixon wasn’t even close to Trump, when it comes to the art of filling the air with smoke.
In Moscow, Putin smiles, confident his useful idiot continues to abide by his will. But what is this hold Putin has on Trump? What can it be that is so powerful that it continues to force the President of the United States to serve as a lackey to a Russian dictator? Surely the President being so seriously co-opted is a security risk to the country and the world that cannot be ignored?
And yet, here we are.
Peace, is increasingly unthinkable. We are monkeys with guns, giving some of the worst among us the power to create our reality.
Even most of the European Union, including two nuclear-armed nations, arriving at our front door on only a moment’s notice, feels like a meaningless gesture. The message they bring is critical. It is pointed. It is a message of life or death. But there is no one there to receive it.
Every day begins with the same horrible hopeless feeling, as though we are without leaders. Leaving nothing but madness, only a kind of self imposed malignancy guiding our path while our immoral national compass is exposed by South Park.
Increasingly, I find I am being driven back to a couple of locals for tv news. KTLA is good. So are WPXI and KDKA, in Pittsburgh. Just today, I found myself installing KABC, Los Angeles.
I was watching Al Jazeera, for its extensive coverage of the Middle East, but it has now become nearly all-Gaza, almost all the time. Which probably makes sense, given the channels location and the scope of the atrocity, the absolutely unspeakable slaughter that’s taking place there. That said, I need a little more variety in the coverage of world events.
Eurovision, was also a pretty good option, until they left reality for what appears to be AI generated programming. If I’m wrong, then my apologies, but it sure sounds like AI. Whatever it is, it isn’t working. Neither are the novice anchors France24 is using, most of them being nowhere near ready for a prime time debut on an international stage.
With the great newspapers and the network news operations dying off, locals may be our broadcasts of last resort? And if they eventually die off, we’ll have nothing left but the “get what you want and not what you need” Internet. For me, PBS, has always been a little dry. With or without federal funding.
It’s happening much faster than I thought it would. Kinda like Trump establishing his oligarchy. Or should I say, dictatorship? As the free press takes a dive, tyranny goes for a ride. In a big convertible with the top down. Never thought I’d see this in our time.
How ironic it will be, if we are left with local tv news as our broadcasts of last resort, with all else having been either bought off and shut down or completely corrupted by soulless predatory capitalism spearheaded by a foreign oligarch. God help us if the Associated Press goes away. If it does, we’ll be left with nothing but local news, which will be better than nothing, but far less than what we need.
The BBC and SkyNews will still be out there, probably. It’s difficult for me to imagine those two British institutions replacing the once mighty CBS, NBC and ABC networks. It is though a thread of hope to cling to, I suppose.
Don’t watch CNN much anymore, but inadvertently landed there this morning. Pamela Brown, was hosting CNN Newsroom, and did an excellent interview with Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee.
It was one of the best interviews I’ve heard with a Trump supporter, with Brown keeping it on topic when the congressman tried to compare an American solider taking a rifle off a Japanese solider during WW II to Elon Musk’s young geeks conducting raids on the U.S. Government. Kudos to her. She exposed Burchett, for exactly what he is, not losing her temper while he continued referring to her as “Ma’am.” The way the good old boy from Tennessee was using it sounded more like a slur than a complement. Brown eventually ended the interview as he continued to spew talking points and got personal, attacking Brown and CNN’s poor ratings rather than addressing actual issues.
She also did an excellent segment on the non-summit, summit in Saudi Arabia. Interesting setup, with the Americans on one side, the Russians on the other and the Saudis at the head of the table and the Ukrainians nowhere to be found. Real through the looking glass stuff. By my way of thinking, anyway. Just an excuse to get Russia and the U.S. back together again, following four years of separation. Happy to see CNN is still letting Jill Dougherty come back to provide input on Putin and the Russians.
While we wait to see the implications of Elon Musk’s attempted takeover of the Treasury of the United States, the gutting of the Justice Department and much of the federal workforce (whether we will receive this month’s Social Security checks), thoughts race through my head about this past election.
Mostly, I continue to be fascinated by the fact that DJT, inherited a stable government with a growing economy. Something those on the right rejected in favor of a convicted felon, who inherited a fortune only to go bankrupt six times before leading an attempted coup against the United States. Donald J. Trump, now appears determined to destroy the stable government he inherited and to ignore the rule of law despite the fact that he swore an oath to “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Trump and his FCC, are now trying to silence the media, the free media, not just those outlets that support the Administration and care only for profitability with no concern for any obligation they might have to provide their viewers or readers with factual news and information. Trump and his lieutenants have targeted CBS, and will undoubtedly target others, including special agents of the FBI, who are being threatened for doing their jobs. Curtailing the work of the FBI would be bad enough. Muzzling a free press, would be as bad and maybe worse.
Imagine having no idea at all, as to what’s actually happening to the country. Imagine news outlets living in fear of saying or writing anything that might upset the Trump Administration. Imagine the United States, following the the path of Hungary or Russia.
Keeping a population ignorant, is one of a tyrant’s greatest weapons. A free press, is among his most powerful enemies.
If you don’t like what’s happening to the country, you can fight back. You can start by calling your U.S. Senators and your representative in Congress, demanding that the laws of the land are upheld, that our Constitution must be preserved – that tyranny, shall not stand. While we can’t all afford to take the government into court, the ACLU can, and will. You can make a donation to the ACLU by clicking here.
It feels as though our business, what was once called the “press” but has now morphed into “media” by virtue of the fact that there is so much more out there than just the old printed word, may have peaked with Dan Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, or maybe with Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate period.
It feels to this 76 year old, like we have been sliding away from being the old watchdog press and into something more and more conservative. Like Victorian ladies and gentlemen, afraid of being overly offensive or possibly attracting a lawsuit.
I recall my mentor, Bill Vance, telling me, “Sooner or later you have to learn to take the gloves off.” Wonder how many newsroom bosses we have like Bill Vance, now? Any? And here we all are, after a long slide into fear and disrespect, driven in no small part by companies that cared only for the bottom line and avoiding lawsuits rather than tough, adversarial Journalism. Companies that merged into just a handful, all or most with a similar mindset.
There were of course, mitigating factors. Things like ENG coming along, with the concurrent demand to do everything on the broadcast side “live,” with little or no time for fact checking. And Ronald Reagan, killing the Fairness Doctrine, giving rise to “trash talk” radio, and wingnut 7/24 cable news channels, with little news and mostly opinion. With all of that, we were “slip sliding away,” weren’t we?
I felt that slide happening, did you? Don’t you think that to a degree this current news business atmosphere aided and abetted Donald Trump? I have to wonder if once we get through this current madness, if in fact we are able to get through it, lessons will be learned about getting back to the “telling it like it is” mindset of the 1960’s? A time when some of us were naive enough to think that the truth was an absolute defense. Could be that every so often people need a reminder.
Well, that’s over. I feel a need to write something about the dog catching the car, but there’s probably nothing I can add to what will be an endless stream of highly critical reviews. Perhaps most biting, is the fact that more than half the country voted their approval of immorality, bullying, and extreme dishonesty.
When the world’s stability is hanging in the balance, there’s no such thing as a “little white lie.” Words, carry weight.
An early thought, which I find most interesting, is how all the Trump voters will feel when they realize they were conned into voting against their own best interests. Again. That they bought into it, big lie after big lie. That they fell for it, hook, line and sinker, or whichever metaphor you prefer. A political cartoonist, might depict it as the dog that caught the car urinating on one of the car’s tires before walking away.
This is the same guy who said he’d build a border wall and get Mexico to pay for it. The same guy who lied to the American people about the threat posed by Covid-19. We didn’t get a wall and more than a million Americans died from Covid.
One of the toughest truths for me to try and get around, is that they bought into the lie that real news was fake and fake news was real. Feels like it came right out of some old KGB playbook in the 60’s, but they bought it, again and again and again, and now we’re all stuck with it. Like a bug on a rug. For at least four years or maybe longer. Who can say just how far the country will slide into monarchy?
Whatever our system might have morphed into, Trump will refuse to leave. By then he’ll be 82. Who knows when his already questionable synaptic relays will simply stop firing? When Mozart was that old, he’d been dead for 47 years.
One imagines Melania, rehearsing for the lead in Evita at the Met, the opera having been federalized for the sake of presidential convenience.
None of it will be our fault, those of us who saw the train wreck coming and tried to warn the country. And now, with the dog having caught the car, and all of us buried under a giant pile of all the best metaphors and analogies we could come up with to try and make things understandable, we can only sit back in shock and amazement that so many of our fellow Americans plunked down their hard earned money on an Edsel when they could have had a shiny new Buick. It’s gonna be a long four years and in the end, we’ll get what we voted for. Or paid for, in the case of Elon Musk, who, according to multiple sources, contributed $130 million to the Trump campaign.
Until then, there’s a monster question the Democrats need to sort out. What was it they did that was so wrong, so abhorrent, that it drove millions of Americans to prefer what was clearly an unacceptable choice? Was there any one thing or was it a national combo plate of sexism, racism and new media driven by a new high-tech that has outpaced our ability to control it? It’s so much easier to bury the truth once it becomes unidentifiable.
I’m no numbers-cruncher, but it irritates me that so many of the polls being reported out feature only the “battleground states,” and nothing about the bigger picture. If Harris annihilates Trump nationwide, won’t that offset the battleground states? Of course a “neck and neck” race in the battleground states is more interesting. And frightening.
I recall a time when Uncle Walter, tried to calm everybody down, rather than creating a state of high anxiety to drive the daily numbers. Last I heard from Nate Silver, Harris was beating Trump nationally in the projected popular vote, if the vote were taken at that very moment in time. Doesn’t that matter? Won’t that swing the electoral college for Harris? I suppose not, since the polls are just a “snapshot” of what’s happening at any given moment. As they keep reminding us, ad nauseam. Sorry, I’m old and grumpy. What was it we used to say? About never letting the facts get in the way of a…….something or another.
What do I know? I’m just a country kid from Frostbite Falls, MN, who once got into an argument about the future of Journalism with Lou Grant. I argued that it was circular, that we’d eventually circle back to the standards of “old school” Journalism. He argued that it would not. That there would be no circling back to what we once were. I hope he was wrong but think maybe he was right. Somebody should do a poll on it.
A former colleague, a man who was a college professor before working decades in the news business, advocated for the licensure of journalists. Real journalists, that is, not those who continually tell falsehoods and then, with their feet held to the fire in court, admit that what they’re doing isn’t real journalism, it’s entertainment. By then, of course, the damage has been largely done, and those who most needed to get the message that fake news isn’t real and real news isn’t fake, are so far gone that they can’t hear anything but the siren call of fear and hatred – which they love, as it appeals to their gut instincts and requires no mental acuity whatsoever.
Wouldn’t requiring anyone wishing to be considered a legitimate journalist to be licensed take care of that? Or much of it? Media outlets, might also be required to obtain a license, if they wanted to be taken seriously by the general public. Let the Society of Professional Journalists act as overseer. They could set up a board, or regional boards, if necessary, using their existing code of ethics as a guide. Anybody losing their license, would no longer be considered a credible source for news. Not long ago, I thought this to be a radical idea. Now, it sounds absolutely reasonable, if we’re to promote the survival of American Democracy.
Another thought that seems more and more reasonable, what with the continuing growth of fascism and what appears to be much of the general public’s growing inability to identify it, is a federal law forbidding anyone other than a native born American, from owning a major media outlet. Not long ago, this idea would have seemed overly restrictive to me, smacking of too much government control. Then an Australian, and his children, none of whom are native born Americans, seized control of FOX. It was also before a man from South Africa who inherited an emerald mine, bought Twitter, and all the mind game political power that goes with it. It was before technology was moving so fast that we couldn’t imagine what the next hi-tech communications monster might be, or who might control it. The Russians? North Korea? Some wealthy trust-fund baby exhibiting signs of psychological co-morbidity who descends from a golden elevator in New York City, with the intention of becoming the first American dictator?
If only native born Americans can become President or Vice President of the United States, then isn’t it only reasonable that native born Americans should be in control of the publicity process that puts them there?
Isn’t the game becoming far too risky to keep playing it without adequate guardrails for the protection of American Democracy? Would licensing journalists and journalism outlets and requiring mass-media owners to be native born, is that asking too much? Once upon a time, I would have thought so. Now, they sound like reasonable ideas if we want to hang onto those freedoms we have left. One of them being, and maybe most importantly, government by the people, administered through elected representatives chosen by free and open elections.
A couple of recommendations for a diversion from our political woes.
Now into its second season, so you can binge, is “The Old Man,” starring Jeff Bridges and Alia Shawkat. Streaming on Hulu, it’s about a CIA retiree who is “hunted both by the agency he once worked for and his own nightmares.” Great acting, wonderful writing, terrific entertainment. It slows down in spots, but not enough to make a difference. Jeff Bridges, shines.
I also recommend “The Penguin” on Max, formerly HBO. Only one episode in this latest Batman villain Penguin prequel saga has dropped. It blew me away. The acting, production standards and story are all top notch. Colin Farrell, is a tour de force in the lead role. If they can keep it up, this should sweep the Emmys. If there is still a movie god left in Hollywood. In a world where “The Bear” is considered to be a comedy and James Darren gets snubbed on the “In Memorial” look back, nothing makes much sense anymore. That said, this is gritty, gamey, dangerous, violent and great. You have been warned.
I’ll also mention “Slow Horses” on Apple TV. A bunch of leftover, misfit, MI-5 agents who thought their careers were over are thrown back into the limelight and are forced to show their stuff in a world of intrigue and government bureaucracy. Gary Oldman, is both disgusting and wonderful as the lead. Again, this one is pretty gritty, but the acting and the writing are wonderful.
If the occult and spooky are to your liking, check out “A Discovery Of Witches” on Netflix. It has vampires, demons and of course, witches. Outstanding production values and incredible acting. For what it is, it’s really very good. Another scarefest on Netflix comes from the great Michelle and Robert King. It’s titled “Evil,” and it is. Scary stuff with amazing creatures crawling out of a hole in the basement wall. The great Andrea Martin, pops up now and again as a fearless nun for comedic relief.
Also from Michelle and Robert King, are “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight,” with the great Christine Baranski, who is better than good. Law office politics and intrigue reminiscent of “L.A. Law.” Both these series are binge worthy. Both are on Paramount+.
Nothing mentioned here could be considered “light and cheery.” Possibly because there’s almost nothing new out there that makes me laugh anymore. There is “Shrinking” on Apple, with Harrison Ford at his deadpan best. Apart from that, there isn’t any new material that makes me smile or even chuckle. Nothing that’s smart or clever, even though awards for alleged comedies keep going out the door.
Wit, it would seem, is out of fashion. Except for “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which is so razor sharp and L.A.-centric as to be over the heads of much of any potential audience. It’s also possible that the very essence of what humor is considered to be is changing and I’m simply too old to catch up. Or maybe, and this is far more likely to me, they’ve just forgotten what “funny” is.
Help me out with something. I’ve been retired for a number of years, but feel I still have the ability to be reasonably objective. Even in the midst of all these new terms like “false equivalency” and “fake news.” It’s easy for the truth to get lost, especially, it seems to me, for those among us who have no memory of the Cronkite era, when the New York Times, was a shining beacon of veracity, and it was so much easier to make personal judgements based upon information that had run its course through what was then our traditional and trusted journalism filter.
So here’s the rub. For me, at least. There is now broad condemnation of MSNBC for being way over on the left and as such, far too liberal. Slanted. It is at least at the opposite end of the spectrum from the people on FOX and the gang of right-wing talkers Rush Limbaugh established. For me though, it appears that the pundits on MSNBC are simply trying to tell the truth, based upon the facts as they are currently known.
Why are media critics so eager to condemn that? Is it because the right is no longer the traditional conservative right, but a gang of lying cultists while mainstream reporters are still trying to cover politics as they always have and can’t adjust to this new normal? Is taking one side over another bad journalism, even if you’re siding with the truth over self aggrandizement and deceit?
I always thought, and still believe, that good journalism is a search for the truth, not denying it because we need to appear to be “balanced” in our coverage of a gang of liars and thieves out to steal our democracy – a thoroughly biased cult of Trump, that is so open about their deceit, that it has been normalized while those on the other side, like MSNBC, have been made to look like they are equally deceitful, because they continue to try and play by the rules in their search for the truth.
It’s so easy to get lost in the rhetorical shuffle, when fake news is real, down is up and night is day. Feels like we are being played by those that Hoover called the “Masters of Deceit.” I’m no huge fan of J. Edgar, but I did read the book and think he may have been right about this one. I think we’re being played, and being played to the max. I think it may be time to back off on Joe and Mika, with a huge assist from Rachel Maddow, for trying to tell the truth. At this point in our nation’s history, I’d consider welcoming Hoover back, tutu and all, to do combat with the demon seed left on our national doorstep by Roy Cohn.
Is anybody else the least bit interested in how complacent the news media have become regarding the fact that Ukraine has not only invaded Russia, but is pushing farther into the country almost daily, capturing 200 Russian soldiers? The captured Russian fighters are being described as “conscripts,” with some accounts making it sound almost like they laid down their arms and surrendered, rather than fight the Ukrainians. Is Putin, running out of soldiers willing to fight his ego-driven war?
The Russians, meanwhile, appear almost flummoxed over the move leading to questions about what Ukraine will do next. Will they march into Moscow, with Putin making his escape to North Korea? Of course not, and yet, there are questions. I know it’s been more than two years since Putin invaded Ukraine, I know Russia has launched a missile attack in retaliation, but come on now, this is Ukraine invading Russia. A country lead by a megalomaniac dictator with a nuclear arsenal. He reportedly thought this thing would be over in days or a couple of weeks, and here we are headed for a three year long conflict that threatens all of Europe. A conflict that has resulted in tens of thousands of Russia’s best and brightest leaving the country.
Or am I expecting far too much from the U.S. press? A media controlled by a relative handful of industrial giants who have normalized a national criminal running for president? A man who should be in prison for leading an attempted coup? Only in America. Or Germany, in the 1930’s. Or is it just me? Am I losing my perspective, something I worked so hard to develop and nurture over so many years as a journalist? I think not. I think the news business has changed, and I’ve remained pretty much the same. Proud of it too, thank you very much.
Thinking about the horror of Trump’s appearance with the NABJ, and what a terrible catch-22 we’re in.
If you put him on the air, even if you feel it’s your obligation to cover what he’s doing as a candidate, you’re giving him a national platform to spew his anger, hatred and fear. True, it’s not a journalist’s job to avoid reality, even if it does look like the next episode of “Evil,” but in this case, normalizing someone who led an attempted coup puts everything in a different light, doesn’t it?
Since his outrageousness is what feeds his campaign to destroy American democracy along with his ego-driven sociopathy, shouldn’t journalists stop providing coverage of his lunatic dog and pony shows and stick to an analysis of the issues? Since rational thinking is apparently something he can’t do, and he has no solid plans for America, other than attacking immigrants and women and cutting taxes for the rich, limiting coverage would provide added perspective on the vast divide between the candidates.
So far, covering Trump as though he’s just another candidate has done nothing but make a bad situation worse by normalizing his neo-Nazi movement. I know the campaign must be covered, but the Trump-free week following the announcement that Biden wouldn’t seek another term, while Donald was conferring with his cabal was heavenly. A return to sanity and the safety it provides as opposed to the master of chaos filling our screens and front pages with his blather each and every day. Or maybe putting all that insane drivel out there is a good idea, as there may be one or two voters who haven’t yet realized that the Donald is certifiably crackers. Co-morbid, as Mary Trump put it in her book, exhibiting more than just one psychological or possibly psychiatric dysfunction.
I dunno, it just feels to me like the news media was horribly late in getting to the party by not recognizing that this is not just another campaign, and as such, it requires a whole different kind of coverage. But that’s where the catch-22 comes in. Not sure what the answer is, I just hope Harris has the staying power to pull us through the storm and into a safe harbor while the usual bunch of reporters struggle to cover this mess as best they can.
What a pleasure it was to turn on “Morning Joe” today to hear Joe and Mika, talking about something other than Donald and Stormy Daniels. It was jaw-dropping, really, hearing them talk with a senior editor from the New York Times, about “How McHaters Lost The Culture War.” I don’t really care all that much, as I gave up on McDonald’s years ago, back when the square burgers at Wendy’s seemed like health food, but it was at least interesting and it was something other than Donald J. Trump.
It was then equally refreshing (caffeine loaded pun intended) to hear Mika, express her opinion that Starbucks has lost its way. She held off for a full year in offering an opinion she said, but now feels that their coffee has changed and that it tastes terrible. It tastes “burned” she said. They also got into Starbucks new drinks, which sound more like a caffeinated ice cream parlor than a haute cuisine coffee bar.
I don’t frequent Starbucks anymore, as I switched to decaf some years ago and Starbucks never seemed to have any decaf brewed. I always had to wait to get a “half-caff,” and I got tired of waiting. Anyway, weren’t they offering those fluffy coffee drinks with lots of whipped cream and syrup decades ago? Is this really something new? Or was the article they were discussing written and then edited by someone without the advantage of being in possession of having any perspective? If you don’t know the history of a topic, you should probably seek out someone who does before going to press?
Granted, the menus at McDonald’s and Starbucks aren’t likely to kick off World War III or change the outcome of the upcoming election, but that’s precisely why I needed to hear it. Hearing something , anything, other than the Donald and Stormy hush money show was exactly what I needed. I wouldn’t be surprised if others feel the same. It’s like we’ve done this before and enough is enough. I’m just tired of it.
Personally, I think they should have just skipped Stormy Daniels II, and moved on with the other three criminal indictments against DJT. I think there are three others? I’m having a hard time keeping it all sorted out and I have to wonder if they filed the hush money case because they thought the other three would be delayed until after the election, and they wanted to get Trump’s sexcapades and creative funding issues back in the press before America goes to the polls.
Please know that I don’t like Trump. I’m not crazy about Joe Biden, either, but Joe isn’t crazy and Trump, apparently is. If you haven’t already done so, read Mary Trump’s book, “How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man.” You owe it to yourself and the country.
The fact that DJT is talking about the fictional character Hannibal Lecter, from the “Silence of the Lambs” movies as if he actually existed, should be enough to make anyone question the man’s mental acuity. When Ronald Reagan, talked about “Rambo,” we all knew that Reagan knew that he was talking about a movie character. With DJT, it’s difficult to know what he thinks when it comes to separating reality from fiction. He seems to think they’re interchangeable, like using a magic marker on a map will actually alter the path of a hurricane. And if it doesn’t, maybe we can just nuke the thing before it hits the Florida coast?
Just as I was starting to feel good about Joe and Mika again, they proved themselves to be true to the MSNBC marketing machine and went back to the trial, which caused me to pick up the remote and switch over to Reuters TV to get some actual news, offered in various lengths from 5 to 30 minutes.
I’ve been watching the Reuters TV 15-minute show lately. Feels about right. Similar to the way I used to feel after watching Cronkite at 6:30. After spending some time with Uncle Walter, I knew what I needed to know. It was a diet of actual news. A well-rounded and intellectually nutritious diet as opposed to being stuffed with iced moca lattes topped by a mountain of whipped cream at the local coffee bar.
A sugar rush can be fun, but depending upon it over the long haul could prove to be fatal.
If you feel like you can’t get what you need from commercial television via a nightly newscast or the 7-24 news channels anymore, there’s a good possibility that you aren’t alone. According to more than one source, the ratings of CNN and MSNBC combined don’t equal the ratings of FOX.
It’s not like they aren’t trying. The guy who is now running CNN, brought in Bill Maher, to try and bump up their numbers with some comic relief. Which is what it’s all about. Better ratings bringing in higher paying commercials. That’s why it’s called “commercial television.” That’s why American tv switched in a comparative blink of an eye from “family tv” shows to shows targeting young women and mothers and then finally teens as their prime demographic. More profitable commercials. Plenty of disposable income and superstores loaded with lots of crap to spend it on.
Point is, a whole lot of us are not in anybody’s target demographic or “demo” as the sales guys like to call it. At least that’s what they called it when I was still in the biz.
All of it has left some of us behind, grateful that the BBC, France24, Sky News and Al Jazeera are out there on streaming video, providing us with some variety of actual world and national news and not just the latest on Trans M&M’s, which politician inadvertently left classified documents stashed away in the bathroom at his beach house or how many murders there were in the inner-city over the weekend.
The networks keep hammering away on the same two or three stories again and again, day after day, and they wonder why their ratings are dropping? What we used to refer to as giving our viewers a “balanced diet” of news and information has been transformed into turning the news into whatever some executive thinks might get a better number. Meaning, friends and neighbors, we are now just inches away from Sybil the Soothsayer as portrayed in the prophetic movie “Network.”
In desperation, and thanks in no small part to Los Angeles radio personality, Ken Minyard, I found some relief. The place to go, is to that magic podcast button on your smartphone or streaming video device.
I follow Minyard on Facebook, so I knew he and his son, Rick, had started a podcast, but I had never listened to it because I just never got into listening to podcasts all that much. I grew up with Sky King, Mr. Greenjeans and Edward R. Murrow and old habits, like turning on the 6 o”clock news and expecting the news to be there, are hard to break. Then, the other day, Ken Minyard mentioned something about Keith Olbermann’s podcast on Facebook.
Olbermann’s departure, left a giant hole in the MSNBC lineup – one that has not been adequately filled – and so, I found his “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” podcast refreshing. It’s not like he’s back on MSNBC, which is where he should be and would be if the people running the place had the courage to overcome whatever political nonsense led to his departure, but at least he’s there in cyberspace with a podcast, providing a voice, a point of view, that’s badly needed.
I’m also now a listener of the “Minyard & Minyard Do a Podcast.” Again, they provide a point of view that is needed and is no longer being provided by our commercial media, because, apparently, they no longer have the courage and (or) common sense to provide it. Apparently they’re afraid those on the right will yell about big media giving a megaphone to those on the left, and, as we all know, those on the right feel they’re the only political entity deserving of any voice at all. Bringing us to our current situation – a general condemnation of anyone with the courage and intellect to search for the truth and then report it out. Even if that means infuriating those on the right, many of whom can’t handle the truth and would rather hear about space lasers and Hunter Biden’s laptop and any other claptrap Fox News happens to be promoting because it gets them a big number.
Is denying the truth because some on one side or another find it to be objectionable a valid reason to avoid it altogether? Or is pursuing the truth and reporting it out – “telling it like it is” as we used to say – still a worthy goal regardless of whatever impact it might have on an outlet’s profits?
If money matters more than the truth, then the truth will go begging, leaving us all ignorant and at the mercy of a relative handful of wealthy tyrants who care only about growing their wealth.
If you’re disappointed in what used to be called television, if you feel defeated in your search for the truth, feeling MSNBC and CNN which has just brought a professional comedian on board, are coming up short on what you need, then you might try podcasts. There are plenty of them out there, and some, like Minyard & Minyard, don’t have any commercial announcements, so they don’t have to worry about losing advertisers should they offend someone’s delicate sensibilities. Others, like Keith Olbermann, will give you what he sees as the best available version of the truth regardless of what any advertiser might think, which could be why he is no longer on the air at MSNBC. Or maybe someone who is still there is afraid he’d be too popular? Either way, they need to put Keith, back on the air. Until then, he has a podcast. But you’ll have to look for it.
