The Death of the News
Oh Lords!
An upstanding gentleman who's name appears to be Brad Blog, is reporting that CNN.com has been using the SAME PHOTO in articles about Iranian AND North Korean Nuclear facilities! Read the stunning revelations here.
It has long been known that people watching television are far more deeply affected by images than oral information. This was demonstrated as far back as Reagan, when it was found that people watching reports which featured images of Reagan smiling and waving and shaking hands accompanied by a critical voice-over ended up with a higher approval rating for the president.
What happened here was presumably that CNN wanted to run an article on Nuclear facilities in North Korea, but did not have a picture to accompany the article, so someone had the bright idea to just use the photo from the Iran article they ran twenty minutes ago.
"No one will notice," they thought, "They're all idiots anyway."
While I don't see this as being part of an intentional conspiracy to deceive, what is particularily scary is that CNN does not believe that an article asserting that a rogue nation, which is headed by a maniac, is in possession of nuclear weapons, is not important enough to run, unwess there are pwetty pictures for the people to wook at.
The Apocalyptic Sign here is the complete degeneration of our media into info-tainment and the utter collapse of any semblance of an attempt to inform the public of anything in an objective and useful way. The unassailable quest for ratings and advertising dollars has completely destroyed the commercial media.
Ah, but I'm just getting warmed up, this post is a one-two punch. The New York Times is also reporting today that there's an increasing chance that they might pull the plug on PBS -- THE ONLY NEWS OUTLET WHICH IS NOT A SLAVE TO RATINGS AND ADVERTISERS!!!
"I'm concerned that PBS is so desperate for funding and support from the Republican-dominated Congress that they're willing to sell their legacy," Mr. Chester said. "They could forgo their historic mandate to do cutting-edge programming and replace it with Bush-administration-friendly educational content."
From "Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS." John Tierney and Jacques Steinberg, New York Times, February 17th 2005.
_________________________________________________
To give credit, where credit is due:
My excessively lengthy, sign-sniffing nose tracked the CNN story through a series of quality links: Blondesense and All-Spin ZOne.
An upstanding gentleman who's name appears to be Brad Blog, is reporting that CNN.com has been using the SAME PHOTO in articles about Iranian AND North Korean Nuclear facilities! Read the stunning revelations here.
It has long been known that people watching television are far more deeply affected by images than oral information. This was demonstrated as far back as Reagan, when it was found that people watching reports which featured images of Reagan smiling and waving and shaking hands accompanied by a critical voice-over ended up with a higher approval rating for the president.
What happened here was presumably that CNN wanted to run an article on Nuclear facilities in North Korea, but did not have a picture to accompany the article, so someone had the bright idea to just use the photo from the Iran article they ran twenty minutes ago.
"No one will notice," they thought, "They're all idiots anyway."
While I don't see this as being part of an intentional conspiracy to deceive, what is particularily scary is that CNN does not believe that an article asserting that a rogue nation, which is headed by a maniac, is in possession of nuclear weapons, is not important enough to run, unwess there are pwetty pictures for the people to wook at.
The Apocalyptic Sign here is the complete degeneration of our media into info-tainment and the utter collapse of any semblance of an attempt to inform the public of anything in an objective and useful way. The unassailable quest for ratings and advertising dollars has completely destroyed the commercial media.
Ah, but I'm just getting warmed up, this post is a one-two punch. The New York Times is also reporting today that there's an increasing chance that they might pull the plug on PBS -- THE ONLY NEWS OUTLET WHICH IS NOT A SLAVE TO RATINGS AND ADVERTISERS!!!
"I'm concerned that PBS is so desperate for funding and support from the Republican-dominated Congress that they're willing to sell their legacy," Mr. Chester said. "They could forgo their historic mandate to do cutting-edge programming and replace it with Bush-administration-friendly educational content."
From "Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS." John Tierney and Jacques Steinberg, New York Times, February 17th 2005.
_________________________________________________
To give credit, where credit is due:
My excessively lengthy, sign-sniffing nose tracked the CNN story through a series of quality links: Blondesense and All-Spin ZOne.
posted by Matthew Lie - Paehlke at 2:44 p.m.
1 Comments:
It's sad when I feel that I get better news from Comedy Central than from the Networks or from dedicated news channels. Public Broadcasting represents the last bastion of information publicly presented with any depth. Bill Moyers defended PBS and NPR well in his Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4233441
I've been enjoying your blog for some time now. I thought I'd chime in. There aren't enough billionaire occultist adventurers in the world. You might enjoy the ramblings of another dabbler in the dark arts: www.eliasartista.com .
G3rg
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