This article about the rise in TV media and its corrosive effect on America's tradition of being a "marketplace of ideas" is a bit long, but really worth the read, if for no other reason than the author, Al Gore, could have/should have been the President of the United States!! Enjoy.
An Excerpt:
- The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories.
And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.
For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.
Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."
The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.")
In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.
2 comments:
Any one who says they're fighting to defend "values" alone, without a clear policy that appeals tangibly to a constituency's interests and has something remotely to do with the values spelled out through their country's constitutional laws, is a gasbag.
I really don't understand this lionizing of Gore. If the Democrats want someone to rally around, why not Hillary Clinton? The Republicans would seem to fear her for a reason, perhaps an ability recognize one (formerly) of their own. This could mean that, unlike Gore, she might actually have the ability to understand her enemy.
I can't see Republicans going with McCain. Besides, whatever happened to this whole "Hillary vs. Condi" mantra that every pundit seems to think is the next big thing? As for being despised in much of the country, maybe that's still the case - (I probably wouldn't know) - but haven't ruled out that gender could make her more competitive than people think in suburban areas that tend to otherwise go red.
To the extent that her polarization is a result of personal style I think it has to do with a calculating laser-beam sense of measure in fine tuning her messages for precision audience effect. Kind of the converse of Gore's problem. He could have had a great and indefinite career as an administrator if only we valued that quality as much as French government does - enough to not restrict its heights to eight creative years as VP. He used to have a resounding personality too, before outsourcing it to Clinton. Like you said, he is efficient.
Sorry, couldn't resist... ;-) That's just the funny side. I agree, there were good and imaginative things he did and said, even if underappreciated or if his primary career did end on a humiliatingly unrecoverable historical footnote.
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