Author Pat Ryan

America’s cable TV universe: where they turn news and tragedy into gossip right before your gullible eyes

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During their coverage of Monday’s Washington Navy Yard shootings a good portion of America’s national cable news organizations clearly demonstrated just how far out of touch they are with what they’re supposed to be doing, at least if “reporting the news” or “practicing journalism” are what they think they’re doing.  (Hint: they’re not.)  Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” stepped up Tuesday night to make the point, again, about as clear as it can be made.  Take a look (click the pics to see the clips):

Stewart starts out using their own work to show that the cable networks believe their job is to put people on the air to talk and talk and talk about an event, even when they don’t know what’s going on:

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Then he singles out CNN for special recognition as a paradigm…of regurgitation of contentlessness.  The funny part—and there is a funny part—is that the same people who are on the air, making wise pronouncements that much of the information learned early in a dynamic event like a mass shooting turns out to be flat wrong, keep repeating what they’ve heard without bothering to confirm the information.  (Confirming the information is a practice known as “reporting.”)  As Stewart points out, labeling the speculation as “speculation” doesn’t mean it’s OK to keep speculating…but they can’t help themselves:

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So, of course, “The Daily Show” news team springs into action to report on the CNN angle of the story…and knocks it out of the park:

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Cue Mr. Henley, please:

We can do “The Innuendo,” we can dance and sing

When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing

We all know that crap is King, give us dirty laundry

Just because there’s been another mass shooting is no reason to think that there’s a problem here

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Reaction to this morning’s shootings at the Washington Navy Yard are running pretty much as you expect them to: most people are concerned and frightened and interested to know more details, and the cable television news is falling all over itself to bring you the very latest on this BREAKING STORY but generally not helping clear up the confusion that’s only to be expected immediately after an event of this sort.  (Wolf Blitzer, I’m talking to you.)  The pro-gun/anti-gun rhetoric that’s followed all the recent major shootings is no doubt on its way; this morning from his Twitter account David Frum gave us all a head start:

Let’s just wait and see: I bet Frum’s suggestions are pretty close to what we’ll see and hear in the next few days.  It’s sad to think that we’re not capable of any more constructive civic discussion than this…or are we?

Oh, there’s one more thing:

“I have a dream”

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Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., took the podium at the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; it is still one of the most profound and moving speeches in the history of American rhetoric, on top of what it meant to the civil rights movement.  King did not dream that his children would one day be able to watch the speech on their desktop computer or smartphone, but they can, and so can we.

The whole thing is remarkable, including the peek you get at what a slice of America looked like in the early 1960s; go to the 12:00 mark to catch the dreams, and then on through to the end for the ad-libbed “let freedom ring”s and the promise of ultimate freedom which still stir my emotions.

“…let freedom ring.  And when this happens…and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Out of the coverage leading up to this week’s anniversary I’ve pulled a couple of gems: from Brian Naylor at NPR, a look at the little segregated southern town that was Washington, D.C. 50 years ago; and from Robert G. Kaiser in The Washington Post, a reporter’s remembrance of the event he covered 50 years earlier, with a quite remarkable admission—that the local paper blew it when it all but overlooked King’s speech in its coverage of the march!

The next time someone says space travel isn’t dangerous…

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…suggest that they read this: Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano’s first person account of his most recent spacewalk, during which he nearly drowned inside his helmet.

…just as I’m thinking about how to uncoil the cable neatly (it is moving around like a thing possessed in the weightlessness), I ‘feel’ that something is wrong. The unexpected sensation of water at the back of my neck surprises me – and I’m in a place where I’d rather not be surprised. I move my head from side to side, confirming my first impression, and with superhuman effort I force myself to inform Houston of what I can feel, knowing that it could signal the end of this EVA.Luca-smiling-ESA

(snip)

At first, we’re both convinced that it must be drinking water from my flask that has leaked out through the straw, or else it’s sweat. But I think the liquid is too cold to be sweat, and more importantly, I can feel it increasing. I can’t see any liquid coming out of the drinking water valve either. When I inform Chris and Shane of this, we immediately receive the order to ‘terminate’ the sortie.

(snip)

As I move back along my route towards the airlock, I become more and more certain that the water is increasing. I feel it covering the sponge on my earphones and I wonder whether I’ll lose audio contact. The water has also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and obscuring my vision. I realise that to get over one of the antennae on my route I will have to move my body into a vertical position, also in order for my safety cable to rewind normally. At that moment, as I turn ‘upside-down’, two things happen: the Sun sets, and my ability to see – already compromised by the water – completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose…

(snip)

I try to contact Chris and Shane: I listen as they talk to each other, but their voices are very faint now: I can hardly hear them and they can’t hear me. I’m alone. I frantically think of a plan. It’s vital that I get inside as quickly as possible. I know that if I stay where I am, Chris will come and get me, but how much time do I have? It’s impossible to know.

(snip)

Space is a harsh, inhospitable frontier and we are explorers, not colonisers. The skills of our engineers and the technology surrounding us make things appear simple when they are not, and perhaps we forget this sometimes.

Better not to forget.

If you need a giggle, try Xinhua

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Official government news agencies are not famous for their whimsy, particularly those whose mission is to convey all the warmth and humanity of a dictatorial regime.  Yet China’s Xinhua agency delivered the goods when it reported that Jeff Bezos had purchased The Washington Post by mistake and was having trouble cancelling the transaction!

Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon reports that Xinhua came across this Andy Borowitz piece in The New Yorker and republished it as fact: Amazon founder Bezos inadvertently clicked on the Post’s website and ended up making a purchase, and customer service wasn’t being too helpful in straightening out the mistake.

Mr. Bezos said he had been on the phone with the Post’s customer service for the better part of the day trying to unwind his mistaken purchase, but so far “they’ve really been giving me the runaround.”

According to Mr. Bezos, “I keep telling them, I don’t know how it got in my cart. I don’t want it. It’s like they’re making it impossible to return it.”

Xinhua does not have an American sense of humor, clearly; it apparently does not have an American sense of plagiarism, either.