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Just an observation, popular in the few remaining smoker's lounges in airports: somehow we've all been trained to treat alcoholism as a disease, and therefore not the individual's fault, yet even as everyone acknowledges that smoking is tougher to kick than heroin, somehow smoking is the moral failing of the smoker. Go take it out on an evil corportation somewhere.
I've written before about what I consider the tragedy of MSNBC: with the stable of reporters from NBC available, they all too often make themselves unwatchable during the day despite the best reporters and therefore the best reports, because they have these very pretty people in the role of news readers, who they coach to behave as if they're on local news shows somewhere. The banter, the forced laughter at bad jokes -- it's just embarrassing.
Watch a few minutes before and after Chris Jannsing or Norah O'Donnell take over, and you'll see what I mean. You actually feel a palpable sense of relief as someone takes over who actually brings some sense of seriousness to the enterprise (and when Norah O'Donnell is your gravitas, you're probably in trouble.) By the same token, the bulk of these people don't suggest a great deal of, uh, er . . . let's just say that when they're mispronouncing the names and words regularly involved with some of these stories you don't have much confidence. (During the fighting in Lebanon the network began leaving the mike open when producers gave instructions. An interesting commentary, I thought. If you think your audience needs to hear from the producers directly to have confidence in your news readers, perhaps instead of letting them hear those conversations, you might want to invest in news readers who inspire intellectual confidence.)
In any event, the 5 am hour, through which a regular rotation of pretty people rotate, is often the worst. MS seems to really, really believe in the idea of forced laughter and light banter for that time slot, even though there's only one news reader there. (Hence the immense challenge of the conversations with the poor weather person.)
But this morning I note that in the news reader chair is David Shuster, an honest-to-God, no kidding reporter, who really knows how to pronounce the words and everything (although they still make him try and banter with the weather person.)
I realize this probably isn't a new strategy. More likely poor Shuster got caught peeing in somebody's cornflakes, as we say, and this is his punishment.
Still, there's gotta be some kid out there somewhere who's just as smart and who'd be willing to get up at this hour to break into the biz, no?
Katie Couric hasn't even taken the anchor chair yet -- does the network really think this type of move is likely to increase her credibility now, when she needs it most?
This is just annoying. The Post has an article that announces a military contract that seems to involve monitoring the media to permit the military to put out a more positive message, a public relations strategy you wouldn't expect to see the military engaged in. Except I'll bet you just about anything that this isn't intended for domestic audiences but for those in Islamic and particularly Arabic countries, that this not only isn't inappropriate but is precisely the kind of work we not only want, but have been demanding, the government get going on. (The url for the contract provided is pretty much useless -- I don't have time to sort through all the contracts offered by the feds this morning, do you?)
Tuesday the Post's media reporter, Howard Kurtz, had a fairly scathing piece on the media's performance during the whole JonBenet affair. He quoted the way a number of outlets weasel-worded their way out of the collapse of the case against the guy -- which surely everyone saw coming -- in such a way as to take no blame for their own behavior whatsoever.
I noticed that yesterday Rita Cosby, who just drives me crazy in any event, was actually on MSNBC, the network which to my mind was without a doubt the worst offender, and far from doing any kind of a mea culpa for being the all JonBenet all the time network, they were actually keeping it up -- covering the extradition proceedings regarding this bizarre little man.
Why would anyone possibly care what happens to him now?
Then yesterday I find, via Memeorandum, a piece in the Boston Globe by Rep. Barney Frank. Now, I like ole Barney, always have. You may disagree with him, but it's hard not to find him sharp, sharp-tongued, and honest about what he thinks and feels.
A WAR is missing. Sadly, it is not missing from the physical location in which it is taking place, and people continue to die as it is waged. But it has largely disappeared from our national debate, and that debate has been sorely distorted as a consequence.
The war in question is in Afghanistan, and it isn't missing because it's no longer of consequence -- in fact, conditions there appear to be deteriorating -- but because of a conscious, unfortunately successful effort by the Bush administration and its conservative allies to ignore it. That's because acknowledging the war there would invalidate their charge that their political opponents are unwilling to take a forceful stand against terrorism.
I'm sorry, but you just can't blame the administration for this. There's a war missing alright, and it's reprehensible, but how the administration spins things, and whatever you think of their arguments in this regard, shouldn't matter -- there are roughly 20,000 Americans in a combat zone, give or take, and the press doesn't seem to be all that interested in what they're up to.
Doesn't that strike anybody else as outrageous, when they they go nuts over a ten year old murder case based on the rantings of a man they all quickly figured out probably hadn't done it?
I wonder what would happen if every relative and every close friend of someone serving in Afghanistan wrote a (very polite) quick little email? Of course, they'd have to do it to the same outlet or the power of it would be diluted, but networks are even more responsive, is my sense, to those kinds of complaints as they are to ratings. So few people go to the trouble they figure people who do really, really care -- and squeaky wheels get a great deal of grease as a result.
Important and disturbing news in this Post article about the strength of Sadr's forces, but in the very, very last paragraph of the article, this:
The visiting British defense minister, Des Browne, told reporters in Baghdad that U.S.-led troops planned to turn over a second province, Dhi Qar, to Iraqi security forces next month.
And only in the very 13th paragraph do we find this nugget:
Over the past week, attacks in Baghdad province averaged about 23 a day, lower than the monthly average for July, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters Monday. Baghdad's average daily homicide rate also dropped 46 percent from July to August, he added.
Gee, that strikes me as, I don't know, kind of important contextualizing information. How 'bout you?
Various outlets can phrase it delicately as the Post does, that the nut job in Colorado "won't be charged," but the implication is that, yes, in fact, he's just some nut who wanted attention, as most people -- and I believe that included most in the media -- believed almost from the beginning.
This revelation, rather than sending the press home with their collective tail between their legs, was milked for another hour on MSNBC and was the lead story last night on CBS. All I could think was if this idiot decides to tell his story that'll be an hour long prime time special. "Why I decided to make stuff up and mislead the press for two weeks."
Judging from what happened yesterday (when everyone alluded to the "media feeding frenzy" but no one actually discussed it) I wouldn't look for that special -- which of course will air only after an intense competition between Diane and Katie and Barbara over who gets the interview -- to include a hard hitting segment on how the press handled itself over the last two weeks. All "why," no "how."
The Post puts up a front page article on civilian deaths in Iraq that is, frankly, borderline irresponsible. While thousands of civilians have died at military hands, few service members have been charged with anything, fewer still with anything serious, the reporters note.
But the article only discusses those instances in which civilians have been killed in all likelihood intentionally, inappropriately, in situations where some kind of criminal charge should at least be considered. As a result the strong impression is left that if a civilian is killed by a military service member something at least borderline criminal has taken place, and if no charges have been filed, something is wrong.
The article never goes into detail explaining types of circumstances under which civilians can be unintentially killed in a war zone. There are all too many of these, and they account for the vast majority of civilian deaths at the hands of a professional, disciplined military. There's no way to eliminate these deaths, only ways to reduce them. There's no point criminalizing these deaths -- but it would have made sense to explain them, rather than to suggest, and add to the increasing presumption, that if a civilian dies in a combat zone as the result of American military action, it must be the result of intentional action.
That doesn't mean there aren't important questions to be asked about those deaths. Is the rate of those deaths higher or lower than previous American wars? Are commanders doing enough to investigate such deaths and to use them as either training opportunities or opportunities to ensure that unit procuedures are improved if possible? Do they in any way reflect sloppiness or a lack of care? But those are separate questions, and to note that thousands have died and then focus exclusively on cases where soldiers and Marines have acted maliciously does readers and service members alike a disservice.
The Fox journalists have been released and are apparently fine. I'd tell you more but I turned on Steve Centanni's gripping account to Shepard Smith late and (ironically) Fox News, which obviously has an exclusive here, shut it down to turn to other stories. In fairness, for all I know that was the ninth time they'd played it this morning -- bad time for me to decide to turn on the TV late, I guess.
In any event, the two are in Israel and I'm sure will quickly make their way home.
It will be interesting, now that there is no issue of how much coverage will endanger them, of how much other outlets will cover their release.
