Disaster Porn
This topic came up for some brief discussion on Real Time With Bill Maher that ought to be part of a larger one, and that is just how sorry the state of our corporate media is with misinforming the public. Everything that is supposed to be "news" is either, as they described it here, "disaster porn" where you're making a buck chasing one ambulance after the other in order to increase your ratings, meanwhile, informing the public about nothing, or if you're not doing that you're putting up two people supposedly on different sides of an issue and at least one or both of them are lying to the viewers in the name of being "fair and balanced."
What's really pitiful about this ambulance chasing is the fact that they do it, and get the public worked up over an issue, and then ignore it. How many reports have we seen about what's going on in Egypt now that things are constantly turning there? What happened to the reporting on Haiti that they were so breathlessly reporting right after the disaster there? And we all watched them cover the gusher of oil BP had pouring into the Gulf until they got tired of that story as well.
I could go on and on but won't since it's not necessary to make the point I wanted to here. If our media wants to chase ambulances and pretend like they're not just doing "disaster porn", is it too much to expect them to do some follow up on the people and those countries that they feigned so much concern for in their previous breathless coverage we watched just a few months before?
Apparently it is too much to ask for them to chase more than one ambulance at a time. And that's exactly what Maher described here. It's disaster porn feeding off of the latest ambulance of the day to chase while ignoring most of what's going on around the world and calling yourself "news." And it's a damned shame that media consolidation in America has assured us we won't get much better until these companies are broken up.
How we deal with distant suffering includes this special kind of pornography, and very troubling humor, all a manifestation of who we are as humans. See Gary Alan Fines telling observations: http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2011/03...
That Law & Order guy needed to shut up.
Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane.
Bill needs to never invite Richard Belzer onto the show again. He acts a lot like Andrew Breitbart or one of his minions.
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and maher is jealous of him, cuz he married a soft core porn actress
Belzer rocks. One of the funniest guys working today, IMHO.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I doubt that Maher is jealous of Belzer for being married to a soft core porn actress. Maher doesn't seem the marrying type. He would rather bang the actress and send her on her way.
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and belzer takes on everyone...from both sides of the aisle
because he hates hypocrisy
the only thing i have issue with him about, is that he loves the conspiracy stuff
but he will never sell out...ever
Richard Belzer does need to shut up and practice some common courtesy. He spoke over everyone and felt like it was his job to explain every issue. And for you fans, he used to be funny back when he did a lot of drugs. Now he is just an enormous blowhard.
Heather,
Isn't Crooks and Liars just as guilty of pushing "disaster porn" as the networks? Just look at how many postings have been done about the nuclear reactors this week. I think there were 4 or 5 in just one day.
I am not saying that we shouldn't be made aware, but there are so many other issues right here in the states that seem be missed. The conservatives love that our attention is focused elsewhere because then we aren't paying attention to their despicable actions.
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False equivalent. C&L contributors have total control over what they choose to post. The Village media follows orders from billionaire owners on how to slant the news. John Amato is no Rupert Murdoch, which is good for all of us.
I don't think it is a false equivalent. You are right that the contributors to Crooks and Liars choose what they post, which makes my argument all that more valid.
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Do you really think C&L writers are chasing ambulances for ratings? They control the content posted for personal interest. I don't see how they are doing it just for the ratings like corporate-run media, whose reporters have no say over what gets published. What you wrote is the false equivalent of comparing apples and oranges. C&L is not beholden to the way corporate media operates. This is the very reason content is published here that does not go "mainstream" so to speak.
Crooks and Liars relies on continued traffic just as much as the networks rely on ratings. If no one views the "web magazine" then why publish? To state otherwise is to not be realistic.
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if it bleeds...it leads
of course americans arent interested in what happens after....we slow down for car crashes
One point is that America needs a news program they can get the news from.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
please dont tell me that is why cable needs to start carrying al jazeera...cuz if you dont think they slant the news and carry what they think is important....then you should watch their coverage on japan
and then show me those hard hitting news stories they have done on the corruption in the arab world....long before the uprisings
all news is slanted
it just got worse when they started to use ratings for the news hours
See an article on the Guardian about the US government's propaganda plan for blog/news comments sections. They've contracted software to allow US military personnel to flood comments sections with fake, pro-government personalities. I have already seen this happen on CNN's comments. It's easy to spot. At first I thought maybe it was just the effects of Fox viewers all repeating the same talking-points. But now it seems they are all fake accounts. We must be careful not to allow them to control the message. Whenever it seems an article or post has more Republican responders than normal Americans, that is a red flag.
Yes, it's pathetic and perverted. They should just concentrate on doing the right thing FFS. Then they could stop lying and cheating.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
They're called sock puppets. They're easy to spot because they are n00bs. They have no hearts, either.
far left loon >.<
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/9457...
Aaron Barr “They still don’t get it. They think all I know is their irc names!!!!! I know their real fing names.” he brags to a colleague. “My plan is to post on the HBGary Fed and HBGary website, Daily Kos, tweet, and post on the anonymous FB page.” He goes on to reiterate “No they are not freaked out. They don’t get it…Greg will tell you. They think I have nothing but a heirarchy based on IRC aliases!”
"To build this capability we will create a set of personas on twitter, blogs, forums, buzz, and myspace under created names that fit the profile (satellitejockey, hack3rman, etc). These accounts are maintained and updated automatically through RSS feeds, retweets, and linking together social media commenting between platforms. With a pool of these accounts to choose from, once you have a real name persona you create a Facebook and LinkedIn account using the given name, lock those accounts down and link these accounts to a selected # of previously created social media accounts, automatically pre-aging the real accounts."
Gov. Bought Software to Fake Multiple Online Personas
Military Launches Spy Operation Using Fake Online Identities
Also know as BOTS. Very derogatory, perverse, underhanded, tools of the depraved.
Give it up you guys - clean up your act and do the right thing instead.
You're just digging your hole deeper and deeper.
Stop lying and cheating, and become the good guys again.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Can't expect much in the way of objective news coverage when, your only objective is to make Money.
The other day i read that more people were getting there news from the Internet than they were from Newspapers. Lets hope Americans can turn off the Brainless crap that they promote as News on Tv. and
finally liberate themselves from the Corporate Propaganda.
It's time for liberals and democrats - sorry Baracko - to have their "nattering nabobs of negatism' moment, and start calling the media what it is; the corporate fascist GOP owned MSM. A fully owned subsidiary of the republican party, and the billionaires who own them.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Pretty much sums it up alright .
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
cut and paste... nothing's changed much. Just, Snooki keeps getting fatter in all the adjoining celebrity titty picture features. Scripted reality programming and 24/7 infomercials... Kind've surprised Huffington and AOL haven't milked this tragic nightmare more? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16/tsun... Actually, The Guardian's been doing pretty OK from day one: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/19/j... And just then... suddenly: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/oi...
"won't get much better until these companies are broken up" , in other words don't expect it to get better , it isn't going to .
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
Aggegation Machine.
current top porn of the moment. The Great Satan launches missle attacks on Lybia.
A splendid time is guaranteed for all. Bang bang shoot shoot.
It's not that I hate the "disaster porn", because.. what, is the media going to act completely nonchalant and uninterested when something like this occurs? Of course, I want to hear about it.
My beef comes from 3 subjects.
A) Media is collective. They all feed off of the momentum of their "competition's" stories, building up one issue at a time. Very few dare to break the mold that has been set. It almost makes me feel as though the Wisconsin protests became a story out of a major fluke, that a few media outlets covered it, so others chimed in, feeling it was "safe" to cover. They ignore large peaceful protests all the time.
B) Media is a laser pointer. Similar to A, but more priority-driven. Millions of people die of starvation, disease, corporate destruction. There is still slavery in the world. There are gangs in South America that will run mines until they are forced out by ANOTHER gang, and the cellphone companies like that. Yet the media focuses on one amount of suffering at a time, if any, Or "dangerous country of the week." As if focusing on more than one problem is way too depressing. Their suffering is just as real as an Afghan woman with her nose cut off.
C) Media has ADD. Similar to "MSNBC" as sort of the "ally we don't trust." We are well aware that the corporate media, even if we agree with something, even if we like the coverage, is only covering something, not out of journalistic integrity or an impassioned sense of responsibility, but because.. it's interesting. And the second you stop being interesting is the second they cover something else. There's barely any follow-ups or follow-throughs to any of a story, as the media has shined their laser pointer elsewhere. Walker even admitted to the fake Koch that this was something that he was counting on.
Of course, if you complain about one or all three, you are ignoring the elephant in the room, that corporately owned media are interested in profit and bridge-building connections.
His show is generally a bore, filled with left-right talking points and his version of conventional wisdom. And, oh yeah, he just despises all religion, except maybe Judaism a bit less. Don't ever be on his show and mouth a lack of support for the State of Israel either.
I hate the media
At cnn, they just watch MSNBC, and when something happens, they send a crew to get footage of some one crying, who just lost everything because of a tornado or something, then they cut to commercial, and sell advertising time. So they are ambulance chasers, or they are tear vampires, living off of the tears of disaster victums.
feast on the sorrow of others and then cut to viagra commercial.
average dimwitted know-nothing American who have absolutely no intellectual curiosity or desire to comprehend why it feels like the world is falling down around them.
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