Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
Let me know if you want in or out
Posted on 09/15/2005 5:51:46 AM PDT by Tolik
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But New Orleans also confirmed how a 24/7, hyper media create and then deflate controversies of the day, from the Aruba embarrassment to Cindy Sheehan's circus.
Thus reports of deaths changed by the hour — not by a magnitude of dozens, but by thousands. New alerts flashed that a toxic soup was nearly lethal to the touch even as we watched rescuers wade through it. We were assured that stagnant water would submerge the city for months, even as our screens showed dry, lighted streets, torrents pumped back out and pools evaporating under scorching heat.
Using its Iraqi template, the wired media's one constant is not amazing human resilience but hyped gloom. Later corrections and downgrades seldom make the headlines like their past blaring inaccuracies.
For all the media's efforts to turn the natural disaster of New Orleans into either a racist nightmare, a death knell for one or the other political parties or an indictment of American culture at large, it was none of that at all. What we did endure instead were slick but poorly educated journalists, worried not about truth but about preempting their rivals with an ever more hysterical story, all in a fuzzy context of political correctness about race, the environment and the war.
....Was it too much to ask reporters to look to history to judge this recovery against other past disasters here and abroad? Could they have strived for accuracy instead of ratings — and at least made sure that the images from their cameras did not refute their own predetermined scripts?
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(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Let me know if you want in or out
VDH can't be a Democrat, can he?
Ah, the column on Katrina I'd been hoping someone would write! Truly a gem. Thanks, Tolik.
< *WHACK!*>
Take THAT, L/MSM. And I'll throw FNC into the mix, their reporting was only slightly better.
He's a Dinosaur Democrat, sort of like Zell Miller. A Democrat that doesn't hate America. Almost extinct on the national scene.
Remember the report about the shark sighted swimming down Bourbon Street? That was ridiculous right away.
Fox had it's brilliant moments, and then there was Shep assuring (over and over) everyone that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet"--even while water was rising in the streets out of his view. And I won't even get into the entire Geraldo fiasco.
I'd like to see him on some of the Sunday morning roundtables...
Chrissy, Timmy....you can't handle the truth!
Yes, it was silly of Geraldo to be swimming in all that muck.
What role did the MEDIA have in the Katrina disaster? Will they be held accountable?
Who was the guy who did his all stand-up reports in waders, standing in the water, when dry land could be seen just 50 feet away in the background?
Thank for the pinger...you were on it early today!
The BBC was a lot worse than our MSM. They made it sound like the end of the world.
The problem seems to be one of distinguishing real events from the " exploito-journalism " they churn out on a daily basis.
These junior "journalists" descend on a news story with formulized recipes for "scooping " each other with one more outrageous "angle" after another...many of them refined from past psuedo-news stories like Sheehan or The Peterson Thing, Aruba, or a juicy Michael Jackson mini-series...each one desparate for an attention grabbing sensational contrived "bulletin" that either they can blurt out during live coverage with the wind and rain and coconuts flying or alternatively some georgeous news "doll'" back at studio can drone on as she reads the "stuff" rolling before her uncomprehending eyes back at studio. They call it "news". It's really "infotainment"...content free pap...cotton candy reporting ,all fluff,titillation and "film -at-eleven" jive.
I was subjected to another and another “reporter” yesterday bent into the wind ad nausea, showing we simple viewers how strong the Ophelia storm was becoming. Enough! Truly mind numbing reporting. The real story of New Orleans demise began a long time ago (natural flow of the Mississippi River).........excellent article except for the inclusion of Global Warming. Start changing the natural flow of any river, stream, wash, and eventually you will have trouble.
”If the building isn’t burning there is nothing to report” same for “if the races get along there is nothing to report…”
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/
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