Two stories from this weekend demonstrate the truth about America's news media:
The first story is about a comment made on Twitter by someone who works on the staff of a Republican congressman from California. The tweet criticized how Sasha and Malia Obama were dressed for a White House function. It said that they looked more like they were ready to go to a bar than to attend a White House function. The tweet was greeted with all sorts of criticism and it was deleted a few hours later. Nevertheless, in the last two days, I have seen roughly ten articles at different news outlets discussing the tweet and just how "outrageous" it was. Three of the articles accused the tweet of being "racist" and one even said that the tweet indicated that all Republicans were inherently racist.
Consider this story closely. If you ever had the occasion to watch "Fashion Police" on cable TV, you know that the late Joan Rivers spent the last years of her career making nasty, snarky comments about clothes being worn by celebrities. Her comments were much worse than anything in the tweet, but people just laughed at them. Now some staffer makes a comment about what president Obama's daughters wore to a ceremony and it is horrible proof of racism that has to be spread across the entire news media?
The second story concerns a comment made by Obama at a bookstore yesterday when he saw Chuck Todd's new book that discusses Obama's failures as president. Obama said that Todd is "sad". That remark got much bigger coverage that the tweet about Sasha and Malia. Admittedly, the remark came from the president of the United States, so it is much more newsworthy than the tweet story (although that is not saying much.) The media is also now debating whether Obama meant that Todd is sad or that the picture of the president used by Todd on the jacket of his book makes Obama look sad. Who really cares? This is not front page news.
Now consider some of the news stories that have not been covered. The battle for Kobani goes on in Syria with the Kurds defending the border town against ISIS. Major battles were fought in the last few days and the ISIS forces began using car bombs to try to dislodge the Kurds. If Kobani falls, it will be a major victory for ISIS, a major loss for the USA, and it will remake the strategic map of the area. You still need to search carefully to get news about the ongoing battle, however. Maybe the media would cover it if the Kurds made fun of the uniforms worn by the ISIS fighters or said that they look "angry".
Or how about a major story I read today in my local Connecticut paper. The local Hearst papers which include the Stamford Advocate and the Greenwich Time, among others, ran a front page piece on the Sunday paper to discuss proposed improvements to the rail system in the region. In this article, the reporter discussed a plan to use track improvements to decrease the travel time between New York City and Philadelphia to 33 minutes. The reporter then explains that to reduce the time in that way would require major improvements in the track of the New Haven line in Connecticut. Of course, travel from New York to Philadelphia goes south out of NYC and the New Haven line is north of NYC, so the two are completely unrelated.
So we get erroneous stories and unimportant information from the media while they ignore what is really important. It is the sad truth of American media.
The first story is about a comment made on Twitter by someone who works on the staff of a Republican congressman from California. The tweet criticized how Sasha and Malia Obama were dressed for a White House function. It said that they looked more like they were ready to go to a bar than to attend a White House function. The tweet was greeted with all sorts of criticism and it was deleted a few hours later. Nevertheless, in the last two days, I have seen roughly ten articles at different news outlets discussing the tweet and just how "outrageous" it was. Three of the articles accused the tweet of being "racist" and one even said that the tweet indicated that all Republicans were inherently racist.
Consider this story closely. If you ever had the occasion to watch "Fashion Police" on cable TV, you know that the late Joan Rivers spent the last years of her career making nasty, snarky comments about clothes being worn by celebrities. Her comments were much worse than anything in the tweet, but people just laughed at them. Now some staffer makes a comment about what president Obama's daughters wore to a ceremony and it is horrible proof of racism that has to be spread across the entire news media?
The second story concerns a comment made by Obama at a bookstore yesterday when he saw Chuck Todd's new book that discusses Obama's failures as president. Obama said that Todd is "sad". That remark got much bigger coverage that the tweet about Sasha and Malia. Admittedly, the remark came from the president of the United States, so it is much more newsworthy than the tweet story (although that is not saying much.) The media is also now debating whether Obama meant that Todd is sad or that the picture of the president used by Todd on the jacket of his book makes Obama look sad. Who really cares? This is not front page news.
Now consider some of the news stories that have not been covered. The battle for Kobani goes on in Syria with the Kurds defending the border town against ISIS. Major battles were fought in the last few days and the ISIS forces began using car bombs to try to dislodge the Kurds. If Kobani falls, it will be a major victory for ISIS, a major loss for the USA, and it will remake the strategic map of the area. You still need to search carefully to get news about the ongoing battle, however. Maybe the media would cover it if the Kurds made fun of the uniforms worn by the ISIS fighters or said that they look "angry".
Or how about a major story I read today in my local Connecticut paper. The local Hearst papers which include the Stamford Advocate and the Greenwich Time, among others, ran a front page piece on the Sunday paper to discuss proposed improvements to the rail system in the region. In this article, the reporter discussed a plan to use track improvements to decrease the travel time between New York City and Philadelphia to 33 minutes. The reporter then explains that to reduce the time in that way would require major improvements in the track of the New Haven line in Connecticut. Of course, travel from New York to Philadelphia goes south out of NYC and the New Haven line is north of NYC, so the two are completely unrelated.
So we get erroneous stories and unimportant information from the media while they ignore what is really important. It is the sad truth of American media.
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