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poliphiloSharon is "fighting for his life"- that's the reigning cliche. But how do they know? Sharon is in a coma; he's not doing anything- and if he is, it isn't visible to bystanders and certainly not to Our Special Reporter Camped Outside The Hospital (poor sod) or his Anchor. Maybe Sharon is longing to just get on with it and pay the ferryman and is furious with the doctors who are holding him back.
I don't know if the standard is getting worse or it's just that I've tumbled to their tricks, but I'm always catching myself shouting at the newscasters these days.
I don't know if the standard is getting worse or it's just that I've tumbled to their tricks, but I'm always catching myself shouting at the newscasters these days.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 05:40 am (UTC)I turn for relief to Channel 4- which provides an hour long evening news broadcast with substantial interviews and expert analysis.
Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 05:25 am (UTC)The odds are that IF he wakes up he will have considerably less brain function than he needs to be "The Sharon" that the world needs him to be. They are most likely doing everything that they can do and that money can buy. But mostly they are buying time to keep "the world according to Sharon" from falling apart while the understudies scramble.
If his heart is beating and his lungs are working one could define that as "fighting for his life". You don't think that reporters should be saying the truth, which probably reads more like, "He's as good as dead."
You want the news guys to say something radical that might turn the world into chaos before he's even dead, maybe?
Reality sucks and most of us common folk are just not ready for it.
Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 05:47 am (UTC)What I want is less of Our Special Reporter hanging around at the hospital gates mouthing bromides. I want short, dignified medical updates and if there's no new information lets talk about something else.
We saw this same ghoulish deathwatch with Pope John Paul II. I think its lazy and stupid and unpleasant.
Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 05:56 am (UTC)Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 06:29 am (UTC)I blame institutional inertia. People still watch the news programmes, because they have to get their news from somewhere- so why change a winning formula (even if it is lazy and cliche-ridden and dull)?
But I don't see why TV news can't be both popular and sharp.
Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 06:33 am (UTC)And I don't see why car insurance agents can't be popular and sharp...
My presumption/assumption for both is that it must not be profitable... or they would be. Is it any different there?
Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 08:57 am (UTC)News programmes are so staid and dull. They all pretty much use the same formulae. Why do presenters have to sit behind desks for Heaven's sake? Why whenever there's a political story do the reporters have to be filmed in front of the White House or The Houses of Parliament? Why can't it all be more fun?
Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 09:20 am (UTC)It's all about money and greed. It has been for a long, long time. Isn't it there?
Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 12:48 pm (UTC)No, not really- but for some reason it's taken me a very long time to lose my faith in the basic decency of humankind.
Re: Having recently come through this very situation...
Date: 2006-01-07 01:41 pm (UTC)I checked a few of my links and found...
Date: 2006-01-07 06:17 am (UTC)These are the ones I read. I especially enjoy seeing al jazeera's perspective on all of the very same news. I suspect that the truth is somewhere in between. *S*
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/07/sharon.main/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/06/sharon.main/index.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
I have only the three network news agencies on my TV so I don't bother with televised news anyway. They all tell me the same stuff.
Re: I checked a few of my links and found...
Date: 2006-01-07 06:37 am (UTC)More Jews? I really don't know. But there is a difference in perspective. The British establishment inclines to greater sympathy with the Palestinians than yours does.
And the British public has never been encouraged to like Sharon.
Re: I checked a few of my links and found...
Date: 2006-01-07 07:14 am (UTC)Re: I checked a few of my links and found...
Date: 2006-01-07 09:00 am (UTC)Ah well.....
Re: I checked a few of my links and found...
Date: 2006-01-07 09:37 am (UTC)Maybe he just mellowed with age? We are now worried that this sudden little step toward peace he took will be a quick step backward the minute he dies.
(My point of view is most likely tainted by media biases here too, though I do check out each point of view and try to sort out the bull from the truth, and my POV is probably the average here.)
Re: I checked a few of my links and found...
Date: 2006-01-07 12:51 pm (UTC)Or maybe he was leaned on- heavily- by the guy in the White House.
Oh! NOW we ARE in trouble!
Date: 2006-01-07 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 09:01 am (UTC)By their clches shall ye know them...
no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 07:56 am (UTC)We used to have the worldwide breathless round-the-clock vigils when great heads of state were in trouble and that was that. Now we have them for every child who tumbles down a well.
That's not to denigrate the personal tragedy of the child and its family. But if you go over the top for everything, what's left when you really need to go over the top? Someone in a coma "fighting for his life", that's what. In a less media-saturated age, he would have been clinging to life, or some such construction tending more to the neutral.
I shout at the news, too, but from the vantage point of my own -isms. How come any time Bush is about to announce some good news, the verb to describe it is never "announces," or "praises," but "trumpets" or "touts", verbs that carry the baggage of flackery? Why can't our allegedly objective media find some objective words to describe what they're describing?
no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 09:08 am (UTC)We got a lot of coverage of those guys who were trapped in the mine. And I was thinking, this is just an intrusion on private grief, it's voyeuristic, it has no possible relevance to the lives of viewers in Britain.
Another thing I hate. Those interviews with victims and witnesses of crimes and catastrophes where they're asked how they feel.....
That's easy...
Date: 2006-01-07 09:39 am (UTC)Re: That's easy...
Date: 2006-01-07 09:42 am (UTC)Re: That's easy...
Date: 2006-01-07 12:53 pm (UTC)"allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 09:46 am (UTC)Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 02:19 pm (UTC)I note that in other comments on this thread you speak a lot about "we Americans." I don't think that anyone can characterize my fellow citizens in so monolithic a fashion. We, meaning you and I, are likely to find that we have many things and common but also many points of difference.
When I was growing up my father, a journalism major, was adamant that opinion belonged on the editorial pages and not in news stories. That has pretty much gone by the boards these days. When an article begins something like, "In a desperate bid to buttress his flagging poll numbers, so-and-so claimed..." it's not reportage, it's opinion, and should be clearly labeled as such and put on the editorial or op-ed page.
This is no longer happening. I'm assuming that the end result will be a jaded public that says "it's all spin" and tries to sift out the bits of fact among the flood of opinion, but I acknowledge that I may be overestimating the capacity for critical thought of many consumers of U.S. media.
Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 07:13 pm (UTC)Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 08:14 pm (UTC)The Wall Street Journal has been on and on about how all the good news about the economy tends to be buried.
Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 08:18 pm (UTC)Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 08:23 pm (UTC)Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 08:29 pm (UTC)I'm also influenced by IBM's recent announcement that it's ending it's pension plan. While it doesn't affect me--I get no retirement benefits from IBM because I'm not really an employee--I think it expresses a view of the future that is not a rosy one. And it's certainly going to affect the lives of the people who had been depending on those pensions. This is just one example of the kind of thing that's happening all over that makes me feel less than optimistic about the economy.
But then, at this point, I'm not sure what it would take me to feel optimistic about it!
Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 08:40 pm (UTC)Re: "allegedly objective media"
Date: 2006-01-07 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 12:57 pm (UTC)I have the same problem, as does my wife, which is why I try to get my news from online or radio. The TV stays pretty much stuck on the Cartoon Network; I don't know if they have that across the pond but it's a 24-hour cartoon channel. It keeps my blood pressure down.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 01:18 pm (UTC)My favourite cartoon is Itchy and Scratchy.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 01:43 pm (UTC)The interesting story here is surely Sharon's successor and his ideas and policies, and for that, as ever, you have to listen to the radio.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 02:05 am (UTC)Sharon is already the past.
I was watching a repeat of The Day Today last night. You'd think the TV journos might have taken some notice of that blazing satire- but it's as if it had never been
Water off a duck's back.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 05:00 am (UTC)A friend of mine, one of those Special Reporters Camped Outside The Hospital (or at leat one of the reporters that sent the first night there), says that the media has to keep up with the public's constantly growing appetite for news, even though there are no news (and he personally hates it, as it makes him to lose sleep and get wet for nothing). But I'm not sure about the public's appetite - most people I know don't need the 24-hours live broadcast from the hospital entrance. Or maybe people I know do not represent the regular "public"?
no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 07:32 am (UTC)