Posted on 01/04/2005 12:53:39 PM PST by Williams
Am I the only one sick of the tsunami coverage? Maybe it's the obvious fact the media has no other big story it wants to cover. Maybe the idiotic anti-Bush angle they have developed. But I think it's just the plain old fact the disaster coverage has reached the point where it is out of proportion to the disaster itself.
Of course the tsunami was a terrible event and there needs to be a major relief effort. But I started getting annoyed when they called it the worst natural disaster in history. I knew I'd lived during 200 or 300,000 deaths at a time caused by cyclones in Pakistan/Bangladesh/India in the 70's.
The disaster is an important one but it's spread out over many countries. And I am highly suspicious that many of these corrupt governments began upping the casualty figures, knowing it would mean more share of the aid pie. Not that I want to become a tsunami denier, but it just seems like another example of the media's chicken little approach to the World.
Conservative commentators have noted that tragedies like Darfur and Rwanda killed more people but didn't get the coverage. But ecven without the political overtones, the coverage of this thing is disturbingly reminiscent of Scot Peterson/Princess Diana/ etal.
I think it reached it's height with Diane Sawyer yelling at Colin Powell this morning and insisting that Japan is giving more, yada yada yada. The media cares about no one and we all know they will let certain groups be slaughtered while they collectively look the other way.
Well at least they are not still talking about Helmut Kohl being rescued from his condo and airlifted out.
I think the news organizations do not keep things in proper perspective at times...CNN devoted hardly more than one sentence in their ongoing coverage last night to the fact that thousands of Americans are missing or unaccounted for according to the State Dept. But next they'll show 3 minutes of footage of elephants being used to remove large debris in some isolated village. Following that comes 2 minutes of coverage of a mama dolphin & her sick cub(?) who are shown being tended to by a boat of what I presume are animal rights activists. After seeing that, I decided it was time to switch to another channel.
Those two together couldn't make a pimple on the O.J.Simpson case. Didn't that go on for about five years? Seemed like it.
HOWEVER, where is the coverage of the 4,500 Americans who are missing? Who are they and what are we doing to find them? MSM is focused on the missing and dead of nation's other than ours.
Yeah, they are all overcovering it. It used to be that "journalists" were taught that if you overcover a story you risk losing the audience through sheer overload of the senses. They think that this and the murder coverages that would in the past have been purely local stories and Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant etc, etc will pull in the viewers when actually the viewers become overloaded and mentally tired of hearing/seeing it. At that point the public starts to tune out and go elsewhere on the dial. It's an important story, but it is being overplayed -- when you see it for the 1000th time your mind says nothing new here, heard it already.
Here is what I'm talking about. I always access FR via the News/Activism page. When I went to post there it has a category choice for "vanity" which I selected, and of course we know people post vanities, some of which get left up by the moderator. So this page does allow for vanity posts (although I concede that can be abused, perhaps including this one).
The airtime was when TehReyZuh was at the aid center packing boxes saying that the children should be nekkid and Americans needed to send generators.
No there wasn't. If I remember right, it was mentioned in passing. Things were different then
Step back from the television. Walk toward the front door. Open it. Talk a walk. Breathe some fresh air. Live for something other than television.
No, you're not. I'm sick of it too.
OK. You're throwing me by bringing up 911.
I've seen a good bit of tsunami coverage, and except for the 10 day old "stingy" thing that keeps getting reposted here at FR daily, the coverage has not been anti-American, at least I've not seen it that way.
It seems to me that past tragedies in Bangladesh, Biafra, etc got World wide attention for long periods of time, and lots of relief funds were raised without cable tv and without devoting 2/3 of a 24 hour day to one story. Maybe my complaint is that cable news channels become one story channels on a regular basis.
Well at least they are not still talking about Helmut Kohl being rescued from his condo and airlifted out.<<
Of course not! That just made 'ole helmut look bad.
How does something like this get blown out of proportion?
about a zillionth as annoying as the scott peterson coverage.
Just wait till the Gonzales confirmation begins......you'll hear plenty about Abu Grahib<<
They should be careful about that. If panties on the head, and men in a heap are considered toorture, then homosexuals will loose their battle for marriage, porn industries will have to shut down, etc.
Oh, but you will. Amber Frey wrote a book and I believe it comes out today.
So be glad for the tsunami coverage, or it would be wall to wall Amber again!
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