American Warmonger

Random thoughts on the media

If you've spent any time watching the news you will notice that a lound, boisterous demonstration will get press faster than a well organized and polite one. They will glom onto a story on the remote chance the national guard needs to be called in or someone gets trampled to death.

We saw it with the 2004 elections. By every tactic that the media understood John F. Kerry should have won the election. The majority of the media outlets were giving him more favorable coverage. His supporters were getting in the news much more often than Dubya's. By all accounts of how the media deciphers things Kerry should have won it. What went wrong? The squeaky wheel got the oil. Media overestimated the poer of those with big, noisy, revolutionary mouths. They forgot that not everyone is an activist, some people actually work for a living.

The media will put politics in a ploar opposite light much more quickly than it will actually start a functional discussion. Everything that political commentary has to offer is either a right or a left issue. They've even formulated it that way. Crossfire and Hannity and Colmes are two primary examples. It's turned into a recognized format. Take a lefty and a righty and get them to yell at each other Jerry Springer style. It has gotten so bad that political comedian Jon Stewart went on Crossfire to explain how they were "hurting America".

One show I have found to be worth while comes on at odd hours on the weekend, called Fox News Watch with about five rather intelligent people actually discussing issues instead of fighting each other. They don't usually come to any specific agreement about things but you can at least get a better idea of the points of things than a he said - she said.

Something equally as polar has, and probably always will be, the rights to life or death. One side calls itself "choice" and the other life or death. It gets heated and somehow those that don't believe either side completely are pushed out of the picture. People push the "godly against the godless" meme into the picture and things get polarized back to Democrat vs. Republican again. I guess my theory of finding some middleground on some issues is inconcievable and not newsworthy.

Another polarizing issue is the military. If one servicemember does something wrong, or if a bad local policy is pushed through, or something gets out of hand it is always either Bush or Rumsfeld's fault directly. This article is not about debating that point. Others will do that. It turns out that this is a polarizing issue as well. I guess facts about things don't matter as long as you can stir up people's dander.

Today I watched a news story that shouldn't fit any of these categories but since it's real news that can't be ignored they are trying. Today all of the televisions in the world are watching a smokestack. Would it be black or white smoke? That wasn't the real issue they were trying to make though. The real issue was what kind of pope was going to be elected: a progressive or a conservative one.

By the way, we had black smoke. No decision today.

Crossposted at BNN

Posted by aakaakaak at April 18, 2005 03:10 PM