Media Curmudgeon

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March 17, 2008

The Media Gets a B on Last Week’s News Coverage

The media that I read and watch gets an average grade of B for its overall news coverage last week. Following are the stories that were covered and on which the grades are based.

But before you read the grades, let me give you some context (something the media doesn’t do often enough).

I have been teaching college courses on and off for 30 years, 10 as a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism (thus, my obsession with writing about the media), and during those years I observed grade inflation in action. When I began teaching college, teachers could give students who did only fair work a C, poor work a D, and, of course, flunk them with an F if they didn’t show up. But sometime in the middle 1990s, especially with graduate students, for a variety of reasons the lowest grade school administrations would accept for someone who showed up was a B-. In the old days, a B was a good grade which meant “above average” or “good,” as opposed to “fair,” which would have been the forbidden C. But today, with a B- being the lowest grade allowed, a B means only “fair” and a B- means “poor.” This is the context for my overall grade of B for last week’s coverage of these stories:

President Bush – C The media generally gave the incoherent W cream puff coverage just for showing up.
Former president Bill Clinton – B+ The media generally gave Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend very little coverage, except on talk shows, which is why it deserves a B+ – the less coverage of Bill, the better the grade. No mentions equal an A.
Senator Hillary Clinton – B The media generally gave ex-president Clinton’s wife less cream puff coverage than the previous two weeks and started to ask when she was going to release her tax returns and contributors to the Clinton library, got on her for Geraldine Ferraro’s obnoxious, racist remarks, and for her generally negative campaigning. The media is still reluctant to go at her too hard lest she play the Republican-like, victim-of-the-biased-media card again. The manipulative victim card and experience card are getting pretty frayed, but the media still lets her deal them too often.
Senator Barack Obama -- B The media gave some play to the story about Obama’s ex-pastor and early mentor’s noxious sermon given last July. But, of course, The New York Times’s dumb columnist, William Kristol, once again got his facts wrong about Obama’s presence at the sermon. How long will The Times allow this kind of lazy stupidity to continue? But more reliable media gave the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermon and Obama’s denouncement of it fairly balanced coverage.
Ex-Governor Elliott Spitzer – B The responsible media gave reasonably balanced coverage to the big story of the week. Of course, the “responsible” media does not include broadcast and cable networks, who out-tabloided the tabloids in salacious coverage, especially in getting feminist psycho-babblists to blame Spitzer’s wife.
Ashley Alexandra Dupre – D The media gave way too much play to Spitzer’s happy hooker. She got more coverage and more favorable coverage than any of the people mentioned above. Her singing career has taken off (along with her bra in newly posed pictures) and she’ll probably soon have a reality show on MTV, like that other porn star, Paris Hilton, does. Ashely no doubt watched Paris's instructional videos to advance her, Ashley's, chosen profession. I think it says it all about the state of our current celebrity-and-sex-obsessed culture and media that Ashley Alexandra Dupre was the big winner last week. The losers, once again, were serious news and societal values.
Ralph _____ – A The media I read and watched last week did not mention the presidential campaign of the perennial spoiler and egomaniac. Many of these people are created by the media, so, conceivably, the media can un-create, or kill, them if they are ignored. If the media never utters his name ever, maybe both R.N.’s candidacy and he will go away. I wish we could say the same about our flirtatious ex-president.

Posted by Charles Warner at 05:56 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at March 18, 2008 09:32 AM writes:

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March 06, 2008

TV Got What It Wanted – A Profitable Horse Race

Television got what it wanted after this past Tuesday’s Democratic primaries – a profitable horse race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. If Obama had won decisively and picked up enough delegates to put the nomination out of reach for Hillary, the race would have been over and the power trip and money geyser would have been shut down.

The media, and especially television, has become obsessed with itself, with news anchors, reporters, and pundits gorging on a huge, narcissistic power trip. These self-absorbed entertainers believe they control the outcome of the primary elections and that the primaries exist to give them the opportunity for exposure, to bloviate, and to influence voters. It’s not about the candidates or democracy or who will be a better president, it’s about them.

And the biggest farce of all is that the television programs with probably the biggest impact on the outcome of Tuesday’s primaries are comedy shows – NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It is fitting that entertainment programs in general and comedy programs, specifically, have now become the agenda setters for American political discourse.

Media bosses are thrilled about the Democratic deadlock because the bitter fight between Clinton and Obama will continue – continue to be fought on television, which means millions more in advertising revenue at time when the country is heading into a recession, with a concomitant decline in advertising expenditures. CNN had the highest ratings in its history for the last debate between Clinton and Obama. Also-ran cable news network MSNBC has had a big run-up in ratings due to its debate coverage and because of the interruptive buffoonery of Chris Matthews and caustic, liberal humor of Keith Olbermann. These cable television networks’ political coverage is not about enhancing the democratic process, it’s about ratings.

Higher ratings mean that these networks (and the broadcast networks, too) can charge more for advertising. Advertisers follow eyeballs, especially 18-49 year old eyeballs, and it doesn’t matter what they are watching – Bill O’Reilly, Wolf Blitzer, Brian Williams, or Keith Olbermann. A fist fight, a high-speed car chase, or anything violent are all good for ratings and profits. Plus, a political debate costs virtually nothing to produce and gets good ratings, thus, it produces higher profits, much higher profits than covering the war in Iraq.

Television is thrilled. The Clinton-Obama fight is a double-whammy winner for them – more power and more profits. The comedy shows and comedians, which include Stewart, Colbert, O’Reilly, Matthews, and Olbermann, are even more ecstatic because it gives them even more to make fun of. The losers are the American public – we are not laughing at the sad spectacle of candidates having to become nattering nabobs of negativism to appeal to the greedy, self-important media, especially television.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:12 AM | Comments (2) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at March 6, 2008 10:08 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at March 6, 2008 02:26 PM writes:

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March 01, 2008

Guest Blogger Nick Kotz Asks About the Antidote

Guest blogger Nick Kotz writes:

"So far, so good. But Neither $4,200 nor $420 million is going to counteract another Swiftboating, which we are certain to get in the coming election. What are the antidotes?

This is a good subject for the Media Curmudgeon to explore now. Common wisdom is that Kerry thought that answering the attacks would simply give them more publicity and waited too late to respond. I don't know whether that analysis is correct. But we do need a powerful effort to prevent an Atwater- or Rove-type attack from stealing another election, not to mention a poll watching effort that will counter almost certain efforts to suppress and subvert the vote in precincts where Obama will be strong.

McCain's decency might help--the way he shot down the Ohio talk host's crude labeling of Barack Hussein Obama as an abettor of terrorists. But what do citizens do and what should the media be doing to minimize or counteract the dirty politics that will at some point pervade the 2008 campaign?

The internet is a powerful new weapon to spread information and arouse political constituencies. Obama's million plus internet contributors shows this power. To what extent did the Swiftboaters utilize the internet and how successfully? If a decorated Vietnam war hero can be turned into peacenik traitor, then an Obama who never served in the military, who is a card carrying member of the ACLU, whose middle name is Hussein, who has exposed every aspect of his coming of age in a magnificent memoir provides huge openings for demagogic attackers. He is vulnerable to smear campaigns.

The other day, a decent banker from Mississippi, in a conversation with me, innocently he said, called the Illinois Democrat "Osama." So curmudgeon, there is a big challenge in the next eight months to guarantee a fair election in which misinformation and dirty voting tactics don't determine the outcome."

I'm not a good enough apothecary, Nick, to have an antidote for this complex issue. The country is divided into thousands of interest groups that have their own little axes to grind, and for a variety of reasons they too often use rage and a take-no-prisoners approach to get their narrow, selfish way. They sharpen their axes and kill anyone who is not with them. There is no sense of compromise. They are throwing spoiled-child tantrums to get their way -- control over women and people who are different, preserving a wasteful, unsustainable way of life -- often driven by homophobia.

I have no antidote for stopping people who will subvert the democratic process and use hate and rage to win an election. I can only give all the money I can to Obama, write blogs, comment on blogs, make calls for Obama, campaign for Obama, and urge everyone I know to stop hating, stop wasting, and volunteer and give for Obama -- to choose hope, real change, cooperation instead of competition, and turn the fate of the country over to a much smarter, much more committed younger generation. We've screwed it up too much.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:58 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

My Nightmare and Its Antidote

Tonight, at about 12:30 a.m., I woke up from the worst nightmare I have ever had. It is still vivid, so I have to purge it by dumping it on my computer and on my readers – I apologize.

Huge thugs dressed in black and grey, like Javiar Bardem in “No Country for Old Men,” wearing huge rubber masks of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, and McCain, were leaping out of nasty anti-Obama attack commercials and, brandishing the same killing tools Bardem used in “No Country…,” were slaughtering young people, including my own children and grandchildren.

Fast cut to another bizarre scene of Bill Clinton trolling for interns in the halls of the White House with one hand on the zipper on his fly and the other hand on a zipper on his mouth, rapidly opening and closing both.

Fast cut to Hillary in the Oval Office, topless, but with pants on, with a wrinkled, evil grin on her face, using a large handgun to gleefully shoot White House staffers as she screeched, “It’s my turn, it’s my turn, it’s my turn!”, with each murder.

My eyes opened. I was in a state of terror. I shook my head to make sure it was a dream. It had been. I then tried to conjure up a positive image – the terror wasn’t going to dampen my spirit if I could help it. I was half asleep, so it wasn’t too hard. I closed my eyes and saw an image of Obama, tall, erect and smiling confidently. He was on a stage of an arena filled with smiling people – young, old, brown, white, and yellow. I recognized the colors of my wonderful family on the faces in the crowd. Barack was holding a mic, and the chord spread out into a huge horn of plenty that, when he moved about gracefully, showered out large block-lettered words – “HOPE,” “CHANGE,” and “COOPERATION.” These words were like bricks that smothered and crushed the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush-McCain-masked terrorists who now all clutched handguns and carried flags with phrases like “Hussein,” “Muslim,” “Coward,” “Drug User,” and “Nigger” scrawled on them.

Obama was giving a campaign speech. He seemed more confident than I’d ever seen him. In his resonant, clam, reassuring voice, he said, “We cannot be driven by fear. We cannot believe the lies of desperate old people. We cannot let nastiness trump hope again, corporate and special-interest money trump change again, or mud cover the light of truth again. Look what we got eight years ago – war, record deficits, tax cuts for the richest American, corruption, a theocracy, torture, world-wide disgust for America, and loss of personal freedom. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the last 12 years. Amnesia will not bring us the change America desperately needs.”

I said to myself, “He’s got to win. We can’t let him be Swift-Boated. These fear-and-loathing mongers cannot be allowed to steal or future again.” I got up out of bed, went online to the Obama website and maxed out my donation and then did the same for my wife. I then signed up to make phone calls to Rhode Island voters tomorrow.

I said to myself, “You cannot be like the disconsolate sheriff in “No Country…” and give up, you can’t despair, and you can’t let the evil murderers win.” I just turned 76 last week and maxing out my donation hurts. I’ve lost over 20 percent of net worth in the stock market decline, so I probably won’t have enough money to last as long as I intend to – another 14 years at least. But my children and grandchildren’s future is more important than mine.

Now is the time for courage, now is the time for action. We need doers, not quitters; workers, not whiners. My laptop will be my light saber, my credit card my Millennium Falcon, and my phone my Frodo. They will be the antidote to my nightmare.

Posted by Charles Warner at 01:43 AM | Comments (7) | Print |

bob hoffman at March 2, 2008 07:49 PM writes:

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Jesse Kornbluth at March 2, 2008 05:37 PM writes:

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Jesse Kornbluth at March 2, 2008 05:35 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at March 2, 2008 05:31 PM writes:

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Jesse Kornbluth at March 2, 2008 05:20 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at March 2, 2008 05:16 PM writes:

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bob hoffman at March 2, 2008 12:56 AM writes:

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