Posted on 10/02/2005 2:35:48 AM PDT by mal
Dan Rather was on ''Larry King Live'' the other night and was asked about the Katrina coverage. Now, say what you like about Dan, but he knows his meteorological phenomena. I've always thought there was something quintessentially American about Dan's hurricane editions of the CBS news -- not the part of the show where he's reporting on the actual hurricane, but the bit where he says "And today's other headlines,'' as if it's the most normal thing in the world to be reading "The Dow closed 19 points down today" while wrapped around a lamppost in your sou'wester with a rusting doublewide flying over your shoulder.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
"Sucking up" ......... to the DNC who are in all their glory having had the old media SAVAGE George Bush over Katrina.
Now, nearly every SeeBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN newscast leads with some kind of story about how George Bush's presidency is in the dumper!
The old established/liberal/socialist media is America's most ruthless, relentless, and destructive enemy.
***
Lies, made up stories, stories slanted for your personal politics, you guys in the lamestream media sure suck.
Hell I don't even believe your line scores in sporting events.
,,,,,
"Thank you, Laid Back Guy. Great reporting. The president certainly has a lot to answer for. Tell me,Laid Back Guy, does that ten thousand figure include the hundreds that died at the hands of the cannibilistic marauders we reported on earlier?"
What a bunch of sh*t!
October 2, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Dan Rather was on ''Larry King Live'' the other night and was asked about the Katrina coverage. Now, say what you like about Dan, but he knows his meteorological phenomena. I've always thought there was something quintessentially American about Dan's hurricane editions of the CBS news -- not the part of the show where he's reporting on the actual hurricane, but the bit where he says "And today's other headlines,'' as if it's the most normal thing in the world to be reading "The Dow closed 19 points down today" while wrapped around a lamppost in your sou'wester with a rusting doublewide flying over your shoulder.
Yet Hurricane Dan professed himself delighted with his successors. "They took us there to the hurricane," he told Larry. "They put the facts in front of us and, very important, they sucked up their guts and talked truth to power."
Er, no. The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they'd been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead! Widespread rape and murder! A 7-year- old gang-raped and then throat-slashed! It was great stuff -- and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.
Most of the media are still in Dan mode, sucking up their guts and congratulating themselves about what a swell job they did during Katrina. CNN producers were advising their guests to "be angry," and there was so much to get angry about, not least the fact that no matter how angry you got on air Anderson Cooper was always much better at it. And Mayor Nagin as well. To show he was angry, he said "frickin'" all the frickin' time so that by the end of a typical Nagin soundbite you felt as if you'd been gang-fricked. "That frickin' Superdome," he raged. "Five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
But nobody got killed by a hooligan in the Superdome. The problem wasn't rape and murder, but the rather more prosaic lack of bathroom facilities. As Ben Stein put it, it was the media that rioted. They grabbed every lurid rumor and took it for a wild joyride across prime time. There was a real story in there -- big hurricane, people dead -- but it wasn't enough, and certainly not for damaging President Bush.
Think about that: Hurricane week was in large part a week of drivel, mostly the bizarre fantasies of New Orleans' incompetent police chief but amplified hugely by a gullible media. Given everything we now know they got wrong in Louisiana, where they speak the language, how likely is it that the great blundering herd are getting it any more accurate in Iraq?
Four years ago, you'll recall, we were bogged down in "the brutal Afghan winter." By "we," I don't mean the military but the media. The line on Afghanistan was that it was the white man's grave. Actually, it was the grave that was white; the man was more of a blueish color thanks to temperatures "so cold that eyelids crust and saliva turns to sludge in the mouth," according to Knight-Ridder's Tom Ifield. "Realistically," reported New York's Daily News, "U.S. forces have a window of two or three weeks before the brutal Afghan winter begins to foreclose options."
Er, no. "Realistically," U.S. forces turned out to have a window of four years, which is how long they've been waiting for the "fast, fast approaching" (ABC's ''Nightline'') brutal Afghan winter to show up. It's Knight-Ridder's news reports that turn to sludge on your lips. The "brutal Afghan winter" is a media fiction.
How many times does this have to happen before the press seriously examines why so many of them get the big stories wrong in exactly the same way? After decades of boasting about "hiring diversity," everybody in America's newsrooms is now so remarkably diverse they all make exactly the same mistakes. Oughtn't that to be just a teensy bit disquieting even to the most blinkered journalism professor?
How appropriate that it should be Dan Rather, always late to yesterday's conventional wisdom, to bless the media's fraudulent coverage of Katrina. Dan was back, along with his dismissed producer Mary Mapes, to defend his fake-memo story from last year. Another interviewer, his former CBS colleague Marvin Kalb, sympathized at the way Rather's terrific story had somehow gotten lost in a lot of tedious quibbling about the fact that the 1970s typewritten memos amazingly used the default font of Microsoft Word: "The focus was not on the substance of your story," complained Marvin to Dan. "The National Guard aspect of the whole thing sort of dropped to the side, and this media focus was on you."
The critics had, as Mary Mapes puts it in her new book, "nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface." To this day, as Dan likes to moan, the White House is still refusing to address the substance of the story.
There's a reason for that. If I say "King Zog of Albania today launched a blistering critique of the CBS News Division," and you point out that King Zog of Albania died in 1961, that's it -- it's over. Doesn't matter how blistering the critique is. And that goes for the hurricane, too. You can't indict Bush for failing to respond when you've spent the previous week demanding he respond to fake crises -- mass murder, mass child rape, five-figure body counts.
Oh, well. Even at CNN, hurricane fever can't last forever. According to the headline writers at the network's Web site on Thursday:
"Bush Narrows Supreme Court List: Judges, Lawyers Being Considered, Analysts Say."
Well, those "analysts" lent a devastating blow to those of us who thought the president would push the envelope, think outside the box and appoint a busboy or exotic dancer. But no. After two centuries of the same-old same-old, it's still "judges, lawyers being considered." But it's good to know the media are reverting to ponderous statements of the obvious after a wild and wacky couple of weeks' worth of statements of the obviously wrong.
No kidding the media deserve the blame. Why weren't they out helping the people instead of being voyeurs, fat and happy watching them suffer? They were out there like vultures, waiting for a juicy story to put on the news so their ratings would go up.
The media are a product of their viewership. They deliver what the people demand. Many posters on here were just as bad, accepting unconfirmed reports and rumours as facts when it fitted in with their world view.
Dan's running for some kind of sainthood. Surprised he's not on the Peace Prize list.
It was amusing to see the media ask President Bush if he felt he might be in the way. I was sure hoping the President would fire back; "Hell, you're the guys in the way."
I just reread Steyn's column thanks to your post. Every paragraph was a home run. Soon, Larry King will have on Bill Maher for a full hour spewing his Bush hating crap over Katrina, etc. I sure wish Steyn could get a rebuttal.
No kidding. Incredible.
Yes, that is true, isn't it? Well put. I like the way you said that. Sensationalism sells and attracts viewers. We have to be careful not to believe everything that we read and see on TV. (If it wasn't so early and I didn't have a plane to catch, I would be a little more coherent.)
CNN is challenging World Wrestling?
Carolyn
True. No one delivers news anymore. What they 'produce' is a 'product' that is 'targeted' for their specific market.
Would people support a group of people that merely gather and report facts, without dressing it up or spinning it? Wouldn't that be interesting? It most certainly would be unique for today.
New Orleans....Can You say...DYSFUNCTONAL...I knew You could.
MSM...Can you say...STUCK ON STUPID...I knew You could.
Hurricane coverage for Katrina was a textbook case of BAD journalism. I'm surprised so few people are talking about it.
6. Texas: Local police watch for looting.
Louisiana: Local police participate in looting.
" Would people support a group of people that merely gather and report facts, without dressing it up or spinning it?"
Problem is, one person's 'fact' is another person's spin. Even choosing which 'facts' to present in which order is a 'biased' decision. Best that can be hoped for is that they allow airtime to opposing viewpoints, point out any obvious inaccuracies in the accounts and allow the viewer to make up their own mind.
I just have to say that was a great post...I thought about the very same thing with the two States..I am sure lots of folks did..
Always a problem when dealing with 'facts' instead of facts.
I thought it was Bush's fault?
"Always a problem when dealing with 'facts' instead of facts."
But without the 'facts', a news broadcast would take about 5 minutes. Which would be a problem for 24 hour news stations ;)
Post 12 says it all. Very good! The news guys kept trying to stir up Texans, choosing only a person in Texas who was angry at the authorities as their one victim interview in a show. Meanwhile, every Texan I know got on with life - evacuating, then coming back and straightening things up without a word about how someone should help them!
There's a word that defines a group of people (reporters) who have such low expectations of a group of poor, black, citizens that they believe rumors and lies about them. It's called RACISM.
BUMP!
Steyn has the "Emperor's Not Wearing Any Clothes " Award for the Media (mainstream and otherwise).
For the longest time, news coverage has evolved from journalism to "Info-tainment".
Glittzy, spectacular, melodramatic razzel dazzel delivered in easily digestible ,repeatable sound bites,replete with crawl graphics containing sports scores, crime statistics, unrelated commentary, plastered with special graphics,promos for other programs and all delivered by sports production "on-the-scene-live" crews and delivered by "news personalities" each out doing the other with slick rain gear,cool baseball caps and situated in gale force gusts of wind ,rain,flying palm fronds and monstrous pounding waves.
All of this with jumpcuts back to studio for coverage by news tarts vacantly reading copy they have just seen about stuff they have no idea about and more concerned that they finish in time for the 70-millionth rerun of "Bob" and his "erection" spot TV commercials.
This is what we have grown to recognize as "NEWS".And it took two calamities with the unerring eye of Mark Steyn for us to realize that our "news mechanisms" are the even greater calamity.
In the event of a real disaster, where on earth do we turn?
More INFOTAINMENT?
I'm deeply disappointed that the MSM didn't pick up all the deaths caused by Zombies. And cannabalism explains why we have only found 1,000 of the 10,000 dead. Maybe some of the missing dead are members of the 1700 strong New Orleans police farce, er, force, that only had 1,000 actual members.
Good list. However, you might want to add that in LA the governor refuses to answer questions while many want to blame the former governor of Texas for her mistakes.
Yet another example of why no one compares to Steyn.
the "rumors" the posters here were commenting on were almost entirely items reported on TV news as fact! The value of the commentary here on FR, however, is that enough intelligent and informed posters are available to sort through the garbage presented as news. Katrina is an example of an too much garbage and too few alternative sources (due to the evac and phone lines being down) for the filter here to work as well and as fast.
Classic Steyn.
"the "rumors" the posters here were commenting on were almost entirely items reported on TV news as fact!"
Not really. If you do a Google News search on articles from the time period on the Superdome 'rapes and murders' for instance, the story is always presented as what it is: something that has been reported, but that the reporter had not personally seen. The only time anyone claims as it as a fact is in quotes from authorities (I see Ray Nagin and Eddie Compass for example). In these cases, the media has (accurately) reported the statements that they made. Again, in the case of the '10000 dead' - this eminated from a statement by Senator David Vitter, the quote being “My guess is that it will start at 10,000, but that is only a guess,”. Again, all the reports I see quote that as stated, nowhere can I see it being claimed as a fact.
I don't really see what you think the alternative is, whether the media should just not report the words of officials until such time as they can personally verify. But then, everyone would complain that they weren't being given any information.
"How many times does this have to happen before the press seriously examines why so many of them get the big stories wrong in exactly the same way?"
Yet we can click back in the archive of the Sun-Times and find an article by Steyn dated September 4th:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn04.html
"Anyone watching TV in recent days will have seen plenty of "re-primitivized man," not in Liberia or Somalia, but in Louisiana. Cops smashing the Wal-Mart DVD cabinet so they can get their share of the booty along with the rest of the looters, gangs firing on a children's hospital and on rescue helicopters, hurricane victims being raped in the New Orleans Convention Center. . . "
"Not exactly the most impressive law enforcement agency even on a good day, the New Orleans Police Department sent along some 80 officers to rescue the rape victims trapped in the Convention Center, but were beaten back by the mob"
I usually find Steyn's stuff interesting and thought provoking, but this article is laughable hypocracy, at best.
Brilliant!
Went to the SunTimes page, decided to read the "printer" version - slightly easier.
But when you click on that link you are taken to a bucolic - farmer in the field - video commercial sponsored by the ACLU! I kid you not - Steyn's column sponsored by the ACLU! There is a small option up in the corner that allows you to skip the commercial.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to find an NRA commercial anywhere near a Chomsky or Carter (as in jimmah) op-ed piece.
Whoa! Great point.
Very blount...there should have been bloggers there. MSM failed for the most part, and you can see various holes in every story told by CNN. A team of a dozen bloggers would have told the "missing" policemen story entirely, and cracked the entire episode 3 days after the hurricane. The buses parked downtown....they would have been live on the internet 12 hours prior to the hurricane. The behavior of the mayor...letting tourists stay in town...during the hurricane...would have been played out nation-wide and the guy would have been called a fool by 3rd day after the hurricane. We bloggers have missed various opportunities to right wrongs. Its time to pick up a digital camera, a cellphone, and start reporting real-life events. Count the media out...they have failed...its time to right this boat and start telling truths.
Perhaps not.
MSM and Hollywood subscribers/viewers continue to drop. And they see what works (Fox News, G/PG-rated films, Mel Gibson), but they absolutely refuse to imitate what works.
The media's response to decreased viewers is to become more outrageous. But viewers have a choice, and they refuse to be lied to or offended.
I don't think many people are demanding to be lied to. Unless they are leftist Bush-haters who need a steady supply of misinformation to feed their hate. But this is a relatively small percentage of the potential audience. To believe the media, you need to simultaneously believe that GW Bush is both incompetent and an evil genius.
I tend to believe that the MSM is orchestrated propaganda. Made mostly ineffective by the internet.
LOL! And how true: the MSM is now is the entertainment business, spinning yarns to compete with the amusement arms of the networks and film studios.
After decades of boasting about "hiring diversity," everybody in America's newsrooms is now so remarkably diverse they all make exactly the same mistakes. Oughtn't that to be just a teensy bit disquieting even to the most blinkered journalism professor?
None so blind as those that refuse to see!
Wow! Getting this in a Steyn thread is like a two-fer. Thanks.
By the list you posted, it's clear that you've fallen victim to media reports.
For starters, you're painting all of Louisiana with the New Orleans brush, and even worse, you're lumping all New Orleans residents with the very small pecentage who did not evacuate.
Most Louisiana evacuees left plenty early, made sure to fill their tanks and keep them filled days ahead of time, just like we do every time we're threatened by a hurricane.
The media has focused on a tiny minority of Louisiana Katrina victims in their coverage and you don't seem to be aware of that fact.
"The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled."
As I posted above, Steyn was a part of those media reports, so it's a bit rich for him to preach now about their inaccuracy. In fact, his were worse, at least most of the media reports made it clear that the stories of rapes etc were from a specific source (eg. Eddie Compass) whereas Steyn's report presented them as facts with no riders whatsoever. He has zero credibility on this subject.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.