Category: News Media

Over yonder, Jim Geraghty has a great analysis of the forumulaic bias of MSM nightly news:

The network evening news has become a half-hour analgesic, chopped into snippets divided by commercials for over-the-counter cold medication, prescription drugs, or cure-alls for gastrointestinal distress, for those who want a cranky 73-year-old [i.e., Dan Rather] to tell them what to think.

The evening news is designed for the attention span of an overcaffeinated ferret, with the standard story hitting a predictable rhythm: B-roll footage of an “ordinary American” doing something ordinary — getting her kids ready for school or cooking dinner. Then the inevitable “but.” “BUT — like millions of Americans, Mrs. Smith says her health insurance isn’t covering enough of her expenses.”

Cut to correspondent standing in front of Capitol dome. “Congress is considering legislation about this issue, but Republicans and Democrats disagree.” A one-sentence sound bite of a Democrat saying, “We need this program.” A several-word sound bite of a Republican saying, “But how are we going to pay for it?” Cut to Heritage Foundation type, identified as “spokesman for conservative activist group,” saying some massive new government program isn’t necessary. Cut to some left-of-center type identified as “Harvard professor and health policy expert,” saying, yes, this massive new government program is necessary.

Cut to Mrs. Smith, saying how hard it is to make ends meet, and how she thinks the program would help her a lot. Then the closer: “Whether Mrs. Smith gets what she needs, or whether her children Brittney and Skyler have to go without those benefits, only time will tell. Firstname Lastname, Network Evening News, Washington.” Elapsed time: Just over two minutes. Repeat another ten times. Close with “Courage.”

Meanwhile back at the ranch, one of Geraghty’s correpondents suggests that he needed to tweak one element of this:

Your stereotype of the need-government-please story is great, except it’s atypical that Heritage gets to speak! The conservative side is usually [White House press secretary] Scott McClellan saying something nervous and defensive, like "we have always felt old people deserve the right to live beyond 65."

In his main story, Geraghty adds:

Anyone who actually wants to know more about the news is reading a newspaper, reading magazines, reading blogs, and watching the cable networks. For all the mockery that cable-news debate shows get from established news folks, it’s worth noting that they have at least two people of differing opinions talk about the same subject for five or six minute segments. And instead of trying to encapsulate a four or five-minute interview in one or two sentences, the talking heads get to speak (and sometimes shout) in strings of sentences. They get to make points and challenge each other’s arguments. And the viewers get it straight from the source, instead of summarized by a correspondent.

Preach it, Brother Geraghty! Preach it!

GET THE (INSIDE?) STORY.

GET THE (INSIDE?) STORY.

HERE’S A WONDERFUL INTERVIEW WITH DR. NO.

QUESTION: Is Dr. No a real person?

ANSWER: No.

NOTE: I feel there’s the basis of a "Who’s on first?" routine here:

Are you going to tell me his name?

No.

Why not?

I just did!

No, you didn’t!

Me? I’m not No!

Well, you didn’t tell me his name!

Yes, I did!

No, you didn’t!

I already told you: I’m not No!

But you still won’t tell me his name!

Dan Rather is a fallen newsman.

While he originally did great work that, at the time of the Kennedy Assassination in 1963 caught the Sauronic Eye of the CBS network and got him promoted to national status as a journalist, he eventually became blinded by the arrogance and liberal bias that led him to use phony documents to try to unseat a president. Right?

Wrong.

If what people who knew him at the time are saying is true, Dan Rather was a hyperambitious muck-raker from the beginning who knowingly and repeatedly lied about the Kennedy Assassination and the events surrounding it in order to catapult himself to national prominence.

GET THE STORY.

Dan Rather is a fallen newsman.

While he originally did great work that, at the time of the Kennedy Assassination in 1963 caught the Sauronic Eye of the CBS network and got him promoted to national status as a journalist, he eventually became blinded by the arrogance and liberal bias that led him to use phony documents to try to unseat a president. Right?

Wrong.

If what people who knew him at the time are saying is true, Dan Rather was a hyperambitious muck-raker from the beginning who knowingly and repeatedly lied about the Kennedy Assassination and the events surrounding it in order to catapult himself to national prominence.

GET THE STORY.

Here’s something that happens sometimes:

1. You got to Drudge or another Alt-Media news source (e.g., a blog) that provides links to stories on MSM sources.
2. One particular link is really intriguing.
3. You click it to get to the story on the other side of the link.
4. You find out that the headline, and most of the story, is not at all what was suggested by the link.
5. What’s happened is that the linker picked something out of the story that he considered the most important point, even though it was buried in a longer piece.
6. You agreed with him: This was the most important point. So you’re disappointed that the whole story isn’t about it.

This is happening more and more, and it’s a reflection of a new Internet reality: The MSM is no longer in charge of headlines.

Sure, they are in charge of the headlines that they give stories on their own sites. But they’re not in charge of the headlines given to the same stories when they are linked on other sites.

TAKE THIS STORY, FOR EXAMPLE.

The MSM headline for it is "Dearborn resident helped terror group." As it’s written, it’s about a Middle Eastern man who lives in Dearborn, Michigan who has admitted to helping Hezbollah and who has now gone to jail.

That’s not the real story, though.

The real story is buried toward the end of the piece:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Kourani bribed a Mexican consular official in Beirut to get a visa to travel to Mexico. Kourani and a traveling companion then paid another man in Mexico to be smuggled across the southern U.S. border Feb. 4, 2001, the government said.

WAIT A COTTON-PIKKIN’ MINNIT!

We have VERIFIED PROOF that terrorists (like this yahoo) have been sneaking across the Mexican border???

THAT’S the story!!!

People have been concerned about this for a long time, but if we’ve actually CAUGHT somebody who DID it, THAT’S the fact that need to be trumpeted from the housetops!

It’s what needs to go at the top of the "inverted pyramid" that journalists are supposed to use in writing their stories (whereby the most important fact is mentioned first, then the second most important fact, then the third, and so on).

Drudge got it right when he headlined this story as terrorists sneaking across the southern border.

The MSM missed the REAL story in trying to slavishly viewing these events through "the local angle."

As you may know, there’s a free paper in New York called the New York Press that has run a list of the 52 "funniest" things about John Paul II’s eventual death.

I’ve been asked to comment about this but other than saying that I’m sickened by the very idea, I have been hampered by the fact that I can’t read the list. The web page containing it has unfortunately (fortunately) been Drugealanched and may have even been taken down.

HOWEVER, HERE’S SOME COMMENTARY YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUT.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: A kindly reader (cowboy hat tip to him) sent THIS LINK, which appears to be the original article in an un-lanched form. WARNING! Highly offensive from the get-go! (#47 is mild compared to some, including #52).

As you may know, there’s a free paper in New York called the New York Press that has run a list of the 52 "funniest" things about John Paul II’s eventual death.

I’ve been asked to comment about this but other than saying that I’m sickened by the very idea, I have been hampered by the fact that I can’t read the list. The web page containing it has unfortunately (fortunately) been Drugealanched and may have even been taken down.

HOWEVER, HERE’S SOME COMMENTARY YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUT.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: A kindly reader (cowboy hat tip to him) sent THIS LINK, which appears to be the original article in an un-lanched form. WARNING! Highly offensive from the get-go! (#47 is mild compared to some, including #52).

The Washington Post is carrying a story about the Ugandan decline in AIDS (WARNING! Evil registration requirement!).

Excerpts:

Abstinence and sexual fidelity have played virtually no role in the much-heralded decline of AIDS rates in the most closely studied region of Uganda, two researchers told a gathering of AIDS scientists here.

The findings, not yet published, contradict earlier evidence that attributed Uganda’s success in AIDS prevention largely to campaigns promoting abstinence and faithfulness to sex partners. Much of the prevention work in the Bush administration’s $15 billion global AIDS plan is built around those two themes, and Uganda is frequently cited as evidence that the strategy works.

If the report here stands up to scrutiny — and, more important, is borne out by surveys elsewhere in Uganda — it will deflate one of the few supposed triumphs to come out of AIDS-battered Africa in the last decade [Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this].

Okay, so WaPo is willing to report on a dramatic claim regarding scientific results that haven’t been published in an academic journal and thus presumably haven’t been peer-reviewed yet. They aren’t willing to sign off on the results ("If the report here stands up to scrutiny") but they are willing to report them based on a speech given by to opportunistic individuals who can’t be troubled to run their "results" through the peer-review process before announcing them to the world.

I’m sorry, but this is not the way real science is done.

Neither is it the way real journalism is done.

WaPo has been in the business long enough to know that the story that gets out there first tends to dominate the discussion. By covering an unscientific report, WaPo is using its influence to get an anti-abstinence story out there seeking to undermine Uganda’s (and the Bush administration’s) abstinence-based approach to fighting AIDS.

The fact that WaPo admits that the report may not stand up to scrutiny shows that they know enough to know that they shouldn’t be reporting on this.

Suppose the report doesn’t stand up to scrutiny (as is likely). What then?

Well, how ’bout this:

1. A myth becomes entrenched that abstinence-based programs don’t work.
2. It becomes harder for the U.S. to fund such programs.
3. Less funding is available for them.
4. More people get HIV.
5. More people die from AIDS.
6. The Washington Post and reporter David Brown have blood on their hands.

That’s what they’re risking by reporting on the opportunistic spoutings of a couple of individuals who can’t be "bothered" to run their findings through the peer-review process before announcing them to the world.

By taking that risk, the Washington Post and reporter David Brown already share in bloodguilt.