OVERWHELMING news bias in an attempt to lockstep with the American government as regards the devastation in the Southern United States: the strings are showing.

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Apologies if this is covered elsewhere, but has anybody or EVERYBODY happened to notice that mainstream media (NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX) is desperately trying to pretend as if everything is comfortably under control? Is anybody or EVERYBODY noticing that the vox populi (that is, the internet) is slackjawed in awe of the bungling and madness?

I'm genuinely scared.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 4 September 2005 03:28 (twenty years ago)

CNN actually had been running a perception/reality compare/contrast yesterday on their site, and of course there was the Smith/Rivera vs. Hannity/O'Reilly faceoffs yesterday too. If the idea is that today they're trying to calm down/clamp down on things, then possible enough, but it's not like there's been a monolith here...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 4 September 2005 03:32 (twenty years ago)

Uh, other threads seem to imply that CNN has been surprisingly good about cutting into politicians about how bungled this is. I haven't watched any tv, and I'd normally assume that mainstream media would act as if everything is under control. But the other threads gave me hope that CNN might be gaining some cojones. So, um. Are they?

(xpost)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 4 September 2005 03:33 (twenty years ago)

Maybe I'm not being news junkie enough, tho I've kind of fallen into disaster obsessiveness but those standout moments are comprising the smallest percentage of response in my watching. Most of the time it's just hours of "everything is okay, it's very bad, but everything is okay, they're doing the best they can" pabulum.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 4 September 2005 03:38 (twenty years ago)

CNN has been pretty good, for CNN, except Faux Foxers like Lou Dobbs, always working the pseudopopulist/fascist thread (hasn't spotted any Illegales in the waters, but give him time), now scolding ungrateful black politicans while 'lowing that their charges "may even be true, to some extent", and divining that uppity peoples in this storm haven't acted as right as icons of 9/11 (sure you don't want to bring The Greatest Generation, and God, Guts, and Guns into it quite yet, Lou??) So: desperate survival attempts, and, I dunno, SHOCK, and all the WTC plunder/memoribilia I saw on eBay in 9/05, are just much bushwa blues.Um, so far NPR is better, but don't forget BBC, NYTimes, etc.)

― don, Sunday, 4 September 2005 04:41 (twenty years ago)

heh. Don't trust the media. Unless it's the kind of media you like. Goes for both sides, huh?

― paulhw (paulhw), Sunday, 4 September 2005 05:07 (twenty years ago)

You'd know.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 4 September 2005 05:19 (twenty years ago)

Check the Sunday talk shows to see what kind of spin the establishment media has decided to spoon feed everybody for the following week.

But really, can the administration manage to cover their asses and pass the buck over something this massive? Signs point to NO.. Wait 'til the stories from people at the Superdome start to get out and they start talking about Bush's Potemkin village photo-ops at disaster sites and so on.

― dar1a g (daria g), Sunday, 4 September 2005 05:32 (twenty years ago)

I do think the Bushies can cover their asses. You can find bi-monthly fuckups for the last five years that have gone largely unnoticed - the American people have short attention spans and are conditioned to write off anyone with a complaint (valid or invalid) as troublemakers. The media remains faithfully compliant with those in authority.

Really, I think this was high-tide for the Bushies (on Katrina/NOLA) and they've gotten through relatively unscathed. Anyone pushing for hearings into federal inaction/foulups in the future will be excoriated for 'politicizing a tragedy' and un-patrioticity and so on.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Sunday, 4 September 2005 05:53 (twenty years ago)

Mass Media is going to do what's best for Mass Media.

This usually involves captivating viewers. Sometimes, more often than not, this works in the U.S. government's favor. But sometimes, it works completely against the U.S. government. This latter is one of those cases.

But any tragedy will become "boring" after a while.. It might be ripe for anniversaries for years after, but Mass Media never wants to bore people into misery/excitement/whatever with the same news item for usually longer than 10 days.

I'm morbidly curious what's going to happen the coming week re: central Gulf coast recovery... especially the part of the recovery that most are dreading. The death counters are going to be flying off the handle right around the 9/11 anniversary... While I don't want to actually watch the news around this time, I am curious how this will play out, and (hopefully) change the way 9/11 anniverseries have been treated on the news, because it has been such a pro-Bush propaganda tool in 2002, 2003, and 2004. I can't imagine that dynamic working quite the same this time.. at least, I hope not.

― donut Get Behind Me Carbon Dioxide (donut), Sunday, 4 September 2005 07:16 (twenty years ago)

Furthermore, there will DEFINITELY be Katrina disaster anniverseries for the next few years at least, like it or not.

― donut Get Behind Me Carbon Dioxide (donut), Sunday, 4 September 2005 07:27 (twenty years ago)

british tv coverage of katrina has been vehemently anti-bush, reporters from new orleans shaking with rage, spitting the words out about how badly it's all been handled.

― stevie (stevie), Sunday, 4 September 2005 08:09 (twenty years ago)

thing is, there's more than a few american reporters now doing that, too.

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Sunday, 4 September 2005 08:21 (twenty years ago)

yeah, are the people on this thread actually WATCHING tv?

― renegade bus (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 4 September 2005 09:09 (twenty years ago)

i mean for starters we've got anderson cooper, shepard smith, geraldo rivera, paula zahn, soledad o'brien, and jack cafferty, and they're all asking difficult questions and expressing their dissatisfaction. cnn in particular has been kicking ass this week.

― renegade bus (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 4 September 2005 09:16 (twenty years ago)

another good example:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/index.html

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Sunday, 4 September 2005 09:32 (twenty years ago)

I have said on the other thread how impressed i have been by CNN. All week they have been seething with frustration. I haven't really watched the other networks cuz i was too afraid that i would end up wanting to kill them. i watched a dateline nbc thing that wasn't that bad. ted koppel the other nite was properly mystified by the government's behaviour. i think most people are. the anchor on cnn yesterday said something to the effect of, well, it looks like more reinforcements have arrived. sorry it's saturday. they have ALL been saying things like this. And Cafferty, who i usually hate, has been SCREAMING for bush's head all week.he has been a man possessed.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 4 September 2005 10:19 (twenty years ago)

i mean, cnn even called bush's visit down south an ineffectual photo-op promped in part by THEIR coverage!! they just laughed in disgust at his staged meeting with the governors.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 4 September 2005 10:21 (twenty years ago)

hell, there's even a story still online called

The big disconnect on New Orleans
The official version; then there's the in-the-trenches version
But the conflicting views on Thursday came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts.

again, this is about as close as you're gunna get to one of their anchors pulling a Kanye and saying "YOUR GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO YOU" or running that on 2" bold red crawl along the bottom of the screen

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Sunday, 4 September 2005 10:42 (twenty years ago)

this was jack cafferty last week on cnn:

"The thing that's most glaring in all of this is that the conditions continue to deteriorate for people who are victims and the efforts to do something about it don't seem to be anywhere in sight. [...]

The questions that we ask in The Situation Room every day are posted on the website two or three hours before we go on the air and people who read the website often begin to respond to the questions before the show actually starts. The question for this hour is whether the government is doing a good job in handling the situation.

I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one - no one - is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I'm 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it's fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it's handled this thing.

We're going to talk about something else before the show's over, too. And that's the big elephant in the room. The race and economic class of most of the victims, which the media hasn't discussed much at all, but we will a bit later."

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 4 September 2005 11:19 (twenty years ago)

Don't know if this is old news or not, but FUCK!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/02.html#a4763

― Andrew (enneff), Sunday, 4 September 2005 11:40 (twenty years ago)

Damn, someone should really do that!

― Ian Riese-Moraine: Let this bastard out, and you'll get whiplash! (Eastern Mantr, Sunday, 4 September 2005 12:40 (twenty years ago)

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera were livid about the situation in NOLA as they appeared on H&C. When Hannity tried his usual spin job and said "let's get this in perspective," Smith chopped him off at the knees and started yelling at him saying, "This is perspective!" It was shocking.

Holy shit, Shepard Smith with one of the top ten most OTM statements ever

― Hurting (Hurting), Sunday, 4 September 2005 13:59 (twenty years ago)

the media coverage has been a classic case of groupthink. after 9/11 everyone had to out-patriot each other. immediately in the hurricane's aftermath, everyone had to out-macho each other as being anti-looter. but as the anchors have made their way to nola to report first-hand, they have honestly been appalled at what they have seen, and the entire tenor has changed. the gentlemen's gloves have come off, and newsmen and women have become legitimate advocates of the underclass, of all of those who are suffering to survive. and since this is now the story -- the complete impotence of the bush administration in the face of tragedy -- everyone is jumping on board. this will definitely ebb as it's impossible to maintain this sort of ire for very long, but i do not believe that this tragedy will fade into the general music-montage malaise that everything else seems to. maybe i'm being optimistic, but when i see brian williams say, with tears in his eyes, that every single life in the superdome is worth as much as any of ours or our families, i have to believe that there is something deeper at stake here. i pray that it never lets up. this is not a time for "objectivity" or distance. there is no perspective with which to view this, and i have to give credit -- especially to cnn -- for recognizing that.

― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Sunday, 4 September 2005 14:08 (twenty years ago)

I remember, pretty clearly, this EXACT level of "the humanity" being played out by television news during september 11th. We were optimistic then too.

Again, all the examples brought up on this thread, seem to me to be EXCEPTIONS to the rule and almost always brought about either by liberal talking heads who are officially (and understandably) losing their shit or by people on the ground who are absolutely shocked and enraged by what's going on in front of them. The standard line on the crawl and by the coiffed anchor people remains the same: all is well, there is no boogy man.

Mind you, I've stopped watching tv for the past two days when I reached maximum saturation so maybe I'm missing a sea change.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 4 September 2005 15:12 (twenty years ago)

Incidentally and HOLY FUCK = Halliburton hired for storm cleanup.

Note the Kanye West ad atop the article.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 4 September 2005 15:45 (twenty years ago)

The standard line on the crawl and by the coiffed anchor people remains the same: all is well, there is no boogy man.

yeah i really think you must be watching some alternate universe broadcasts.

― oops (Oops), Sunday, 4 September 2005 22:39 (twenty years ago)

this is the place to read up on much of the news coverage, both good & bad, from op-ed wankers ruminating over a romantic city they had forbidden pleasures in("Faulkner They Ain't) to Ted Koppel and many others holding authority to account.

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Sunday, 4 September 2005 23:47 (twenty years ago)

I'm just seein' what I'm seein' mang.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 04:03 (twenty years ago)

Ben Macintyre, writing in the London Times, recalled a New Orleans,where the "normal rules do not apply," a town that was "a spicy human gumbo..."

OMFG

Coming soon, with xtra okra and cholera.

― Hunter (Hunter), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 04:54 (twenty years ago)

when i checked that article, it was an ad for Tulane Univ of all places

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 05:06 (twenty years ago)

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