Media Madness

I heard two different newscasts this morning; both were "national" rather than local. The stories that were covered were amazing. There was the obligatory coverage of Black Friday shopping crowds. Each one had a lengthy piece on the Occupy movement plan to disrupt shopping at certain stores. Each one had a short piece on events in Cairo with the focus almost exclusively on the two female reporters who had been assaulted. Both mentioned that the Egyptian/American reporter had been raped by police, but neither mentioned that the French reporter had been raped by members of the crowd. Basically, that was the entire newscast.

So what was wrong with these broadcasts? First of all, the United Nations announced that it now has proof that Syrian government forces have been systematically torturing children to get information about the activities of their parents. Somehow, this got overlooked. Second, the Egyptian government is going ahead with elections despite all of the protests. This too was considered unimportant. Third, the Occupy movement plan to disrupt shopping has been a total failure. Even its facebook page for the event could not get a following. Nevertheless, the media covered it as if it were a national movement involving hundreds of thousands of folks. In truth is was more like the 99 people rather than the 99%. In other words, for those who just got their news off the radio this morning, there would be no way to know what is going on in the world. Instead, one just got news on the latest and greatest from the occupy movement together with coverage of what happened to two reporters in Egypt.