Media Truly In Trouble

Let me just begin with a length warning, grab a cup of Joe, an ashtray and whatever else you may need to stick with me on this one. It promises to be a doozy long of a post. In one of those rare Monday moods there is just simply too much that is too related to split into my usual mini posts.

I was reading the NYtimes on the doggy beach yesterday (more on that later) and I ran accross this article in the NYT regarding Lebanese elections:

"Parliamentary elections enter a crucial stage in the mountains above Beirut on Sunday as rival anti-Syrian candidates - those of a long-exiled general and of an unlikely coalition of civil war enemies - face off for the first time."

Astounding I thought because I already knew that there had been at least 1 wave of elections (which apparently no Bush freedom marchers talked about) and that yesterday (Sunday) was supposed to be the 2nd round of elections.

Well apparently, John Kifner and the idiot eitors at the Grey Lady realized this today when they almost lede with this:

Today, they faced off on campaign posters here and all over the central Mount Lebanon region, the steep, lush hills overlooking the Mediterranean, in the critical third phase of a parliamentary election that is being held on a different Sunday in each of four regions of the country.

The article is only a day apart?! Either way the real story is how the Freedom is on the March crowd is being drowned out by crickets on the news that Hezbollah is winning these elections!

Frank Rich really reminds us of exactly how much the Media Is In Trouble and why I stopped screaming at my TV and started writting this blog not so long ago!

The attacks continue to be so successful that even now, long after many news organizations, including The Times, have been found guilty of failing to puncture the administration's prewar W.M.D. hype, new details on that same story are still being ignored or left uninvestigated. The July 2002 "Downing Street memo," the minutes of a meeting in which Tony Blair and his advisers learned of a White House effort to fix "the intelligence and facts" to justify the war in Iraq, was published by The London Sunday Times on May 1. Yet in the 19 daily Scott McClellan briefings that followed, the memo was the subject of only 2 out of the approximately 940 questions asked by the White House press corps, according to Eric Boehlert of Salon.

Indeed! Instead on CNN we get a bald supermodel reporter


Telling us what the hell is going on with the latest WWWA report. Somehow when watching I can't get over hearing the real dialogue between Soledad and Karl Penhaul it goes a little something like this:

Soledad: So we know the white girl is lost but more importantly, how are you dealing with having to cover a story for the requisite 3 -4 weeks so that we don't have to pay attention to the real news in Aruba of all places, and how is that playing in the hearts and minds of all the Aruban chicks women (note Update 2) you must be fucking on a nightly basis?

Karl: Well soledad, it really is a shitty job but someone has to do it! I mean I didn't ask to be assigned to this story although knowing full well that a stint such as this in Aruba would be right up my alley, I just didn't think I would get it. I thought Bill Hemmer would be a shoe in for this job, I guess it is too bad he got sent to Rome for Pope month. Either way, this island is small and I have already banged a record number of chicks women (note Update 2) down here. By the time I get done, I will probably pick up a strange STD.

Soledad: So lets just ask more silly procedurealy related questions that aren't news but more like status updates about the missing white girl while we really discuss the underpinnings of the unfairness that you got the Aruba assignment and none of us did? Is it any wonder why more CNN reporters are increasingly pissed off at the lack of opportunities such as this?

Karl: Yes really, I mean look at your cohost Jack Cafferty, those bags under his eyes are a sure sign he has begun drinking again. I mean he definitely looks like a recovering alcoholic but I hear that once he heard they sent me down here, he fell right off that wagon.

Obviously that is a fake news report, however the real transcript from Karl's report today:

PENHAUL: I'll tell you something else, Ali, it's exactly two weeks now since Natalee Holloway disappeared. And I was outside the Carlos & Charlie's Bar, where she disappeared from, around 1:00 last night. That's the time she was last seen. It was a really eerie feeling to think that the minute she walked out of there, only four people know exactly what happened after that, the three suspects now in custody who were in that car with her and herself -- Ali.

VELSHI: Karl, are there a lot of people outside of Carlos & Charlie's at that hour of the morning? Is it typical that more people might have known? Could there have been more witnesses?

PENHAUL: It's possible. At that time -- the time that Natalee was leaving is also the time that the bar closes. It was a Sunday night coming into Monday morning and that Carlos & Charlie's closes at 1:00 a.m. And at that stage, people tend to pour out. There's a lot of people on the streets while they take cabs and such like. It could be that other people saw them all leave -- Ali.
VELSHI: Karl, good to see you. Thank you very much.

Karl Penhaul in Aruba -- Soledad.

Someone get on the fucking phone and call Pulitzer, Karl Penhaul needs to be awarded that coveted prize for reporting on what a bar looks like at 1AM while it is closing. I can't believe that fucker actually admitted to being at a bar at 1 AM where there is no reporting necessary even to cover this fucking story!

However, the new Terri Schiavo case is already being Market tested to be sure to gain traction on the cable news networks. We now have a cas where parents are refusing radiotherapy for their cancer laden child. As such the state rightfully removed her from their fucking idiotic care and are forcing radiotherapy onto their cancer laden child in the hopes that as in millions of other cases, it worked to treat the cancer.

The parents cite the long term side effects associated with radiation therapy and that they don't want their child getting the "standard protocol" treatment. They feel each cancer is different and as such should be treated different. First of all, the chemotherapy agents already running through this daughter have many more long term health effects than radiotherapy. In fact radiotherapy is now much safer than it ever was, by using new technologies, the radiation can be focused to just affect the tumor, not so in a systemic chemotherapy infusion. As if this isn't a pin big enough to blow the air right out of the case the parents are making, standard boiler plate protocol's of treating cancer are standard boiler plate treatments for a reason. THEY FUCKING WORK!!!!

Yet Soledad missed that this morning.

Another thing that bothers me is the fucking call in or click in polls that typically follow these stories! Like, "Do you think the state was right to have intervened on behalf of the child's welfare?"

So now we are all part of the market research that must surround these stories so that CNN knows how long to send someone down to Aruba and wether or not the data shows a sginifant increaase in ratings enough to justify covering said non-story for a required alotment of time. The polls will no doubt ensure that they accomplish two goals. One, increase overall ratings and two distract attention from anything this country really needs to be informed about. Yes call in and click in so that CNN gets a better finger on wether or not they can hound this one far enough to generate small vigils outside of someone;s hospital. Better yet, the click count will surely signal that American's want cable news to hang around long enough to piss off the locals so much so that a restraining order is required to keep the locals from beating down the reporters!

We reached 1,700 dead US soldiers in Iraq this weekend, there is a memo that has been acknowledged by 500,000 Americans, 89 congressmen and women, and the rest of the world, that implicates our President as a War Criminal, yet American Morning decides that Mike Tyson's Punchout and Mike Jackson's verdict are a bit more important and newsworthy than that!

No wonder Blow Jobs rank high on the list of impeachable offenses in this country!

UPDATE: Welcome Daou Reporters!! Y'all come back now ya hear?!

UPDATE 2: My pissed off feminist girlfriend reminds me that the word chicks is offensive to women and rather "Jerseyesque" of me. Thus the edit. Sorry for my insolence!