Mika Brzezinski's at it again on MSNBC's "Morning Joe", spreading FUD and assisting the administration and the terrorists with her coverage of shoes found with blasting caps in the hollowed out heels. What she fails to also mention which would add a little bit of context to the viewer's understanding of the issue are the news reports citing a report that states airport screeners "failed to spot 70% of the knives, 30% of the guns and 60% of the dummy explosives carried by secret investigators in the months after September 11."
This recent catch, despite how it was hyped, is nothing new and barely 'news'. I'm trying to figure out if it was 'filler' for the show, TV 'hype', or intentional right-wing FUD. Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but either way you slice it the story was poorly done. News should be about getting stories to the viewers with little to no personal bias evident, putting the issue in the correct context, and providing the basic who - where - when - why - and how of the story. Even those basics are woefully missing from so much of the 'news' we see these days in the main stream media.
Newspapers and online news sites do a much better job of covering these basics but there's no good reason that twenty four hour news channels can't do the same if they chose to. I don't want to hear the same old excuse that blames the attention span of the 'average viewer'. That might be partially true, but only because they've been trained that way by the very same institutions that use this as an excuse.
News shouldn't be presented the same way advertising is. Maybe the marketing industry's techniques have been co-opted by the big media owners for news coverage, filtering down to the producers over time but the end result is a shorter attention span of the average viewer and diminishing the end product, which should be news that educates the viewer rather than just entertaining them or lazily parroting the talking points the White House sends out.
It has contributed to the 'dumbing-down' of viewers and to a certain extent contributed to our country being misled into supporting the Iraq quagmire.
[Edited for clarity on 10/27/07 1:15 PM]
Showing posts with label MSNBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MSNBC. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Mika Brzezinski, don't slant the facts!
I'm sitting here watching MSNBC [Morning Joe] at 6 AM and here's how Mika Brzezinski characterized
last night's vote "on capital hill now, a major blow to Democrats after senate Republicans blocked a bill to give US troops more time at home between deployments. The proposal largely seen as a Democratic attempt to challenge president Bush's war policy fell four votes short of the sixty needed to cut off debate... ".
"largely seen as a Democratic attempt to challenge president Bush's war policy"... excuse me?
and
"a major blow to Democrats"? How about a major blow to our overextended troops instead?
By that you're saying that this wasn't a bill about trying to save our military from unending tours wringing the last blood and sweat from our service men and women and sending them home in many cases broken in mind and body? No, to you this is all about the Democrats trying to stick it to the president, eh? You are as twisted as Chris Mathews. You've spent most of your life in the Washington scene, both of you, and you are much too close to the players in this disaster called the Bush presidency.
Your characterization of the Democratic effort to get our troops some much needed rest is a slap in the face to our service members who have suffered while the media (like you) perpetuate the
president's fraud!
And while I'm at it, the morning after one of Keith Olbermann's special comments I heard you utter "chill out..." after playing a clip.
NO, Keith shouldn't "chill out", he's the only one of you who has the character and guts to say [on prime time TV] what the majority of Americans are saying, and the rest need to hear.
You are part of the problem that allowed the fraud leading up to the war to become public perception, and that led us to commit our troops and ultimately to the deaths of close to four thousand of them.
Now you're still at it. Turn around what you said and you're closer to the truth.
And I'm not naive, I realize that politics are involved, but the bottom line of the bill was to aid our troops, and instead of saying that, you chose to perpetuate the Republican fraud and mislead your viewers, the 'fraud' being that Democrats don't support the troops, which is a flat out LIE and you know it!
last night's vote "on capital hill now, a major blow to Democrats after senate Republicans blocked a bill to give US troops more time at home between deployments. The proposal largely seen as a Democratic attempt to challenge president Bush's war policy fell four votes short of the sixty needed to cut off debate... ".
"largely seen as a Democratic attempt to challenge president Bush's war policy"... excuse me?
and
"a major blow to Democrats"? How about a major blow to our overextended troops instead?
By that you're saying that this wasn't a bill about trying to save our military from unending tours wringing the last blood and sweat from our service men and women and sending them home in many cases broken in mind and body? No, to you this is all about the Democrats trying to stick it to the president, eh? You are as twisted as Chris Mathews. You've spent most of your life in the Washington scene, both of you, and you are much too close to the players in this disaster called the Bush presidency.
Your characterization of the Democratic effort to get our troops some much needed rest is a slap in the face to our service members who have suffered while the media (like you) perpetuate the
president's fraud!
And while I'm at it, the morning after one of Keith Olbermann's special comments I heard you utter "chill out..." after playing a clip.
NO, Keith shouldn't "chill out", he's the only one of you who has the character and guts to say [on prime time TV] what the majority of Americans are saying, and the rest need to hear.
You are part of the problem that allowed the fraud leading up to the war to become public perception, and that led us to commit our troops and ultimately to the deaths of close to four thousand of them.
Now you're still at it. Turn around what you said and you're closer to the truth.
And I'm not naive, I realize that politics are involved, but the bottom line of the bill was to aid our troops, and instead of saying that, you chose to perpetuate the Republican fraud and mislead your viewers, the 'fraud' being that Democrats don't support the troops, which is a flat out LIE and you know it!
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