Its a ten page article, so I couldn't edit it all down here.

Anyways, when I saw OUTFOXED last year, not all that much of it was new news to me, but there was a section where they interviewed a sound specialist. He has been responsible for helping to manufactur FOX's "Special Alert Update" and he spoke about how long it took him to develop the perfect sound that would warn that the next 90 seconds would be really important. Like Rabin was just shot, or Diana went through the car window. That kind of stuff. He spoke about working closely with visual specialist who did the flashing lights and preperation to go with the sound. He said he wuit later on and when he looked back (in 2003/4) to see FOX updates, he noticed they were appropriating this well-honed "emergency news" notification for random stuff like "Bush gives speech today." Thats pretty smart. The public has been exposed to certain forms and associations with those forms. One of them is the news update special effects, and the fact that whenever one hears/sees this set, one is to expect something gravely important to follow. Appropriating these expectations for a campaign trail speech to 50 people in a town in central PA creates gravity around it.

So clearly there are expectations about reporting and journalistic "integrity." Its one of the toughest to crack, because it would take decades of reversing the association. First and formost, it may not be a valueable thing to reverse, and furthermore, if it was, who would want to reverse it anyways. Having zero faith in journalism is just as tricky. Anyways, nice to see Bush (Rove) manipulating these expectations even beyond FOX's important updates. At least there the interviewees were being handled by reporters (regardless of the editting that happened afterwards) here they're with holding information even from the people that are then shown on film. I'm surprised the networks air this stuff anyways. Lets see, a little package arrives from the Agriculture Dept, stating "urgent interview, air tonight." Yeah right. Well maybe this will reverse the expectations around journalistic integrityafter all?

And don't return with the Times having an agenda...no kidding. At least they're honest about it.

This kind of prepackaging seems to occur from the part of the media as well (excuse the horrible wording). To give you an example, I read an article on MSNBC during the Iraq election written by an Iraqi citizen living in the US who was voting. She wrote how the camera men for the broadcasters had passed her and her sister by, and others as well, to zoom in on the minority of the people there who whore traditional Middle Eastern clothing, especially the women wearing headscarves etc. The reality was that the majority were in jeans, etc., but judging by the images seen, who would have known? Do they know?

A similar incident involved one of those images of people in Iraq rushing to get food from soldiers handing out packages. Judging by the footage, the entire crowd participated in this pathetic and embarassing act. The truth, however, was that the majority of the people, on whom the camera had not zoomed in on, were patiently waiting in the back.

I have zero faith in the media. But I never had any to begin with. The first time I grew suspicious of them was during Rwanda. I was living in Austria then, and around that time, I had begun reading up on Hitler, the Holocaust, etc. and was shocked at how little was done to prevent it from happening again (you might have noticed by intense interest on the subject matter; it affected me deeply as a child). But on the other hand, how much information was transmitted from Rwanda to the global media stations that actually made it on the six o clock news?

Anyways, I've resigned myself with knowing something which closesly approximates the truth. What I mean by this is that there is, at any given time, sufficient information to determine the basic facts. Bush lied to us, the war was unjustified, Saddam was caught (how or where, that I don't know), Bush won the re-election, the media since 9/11 has gone out of its way to incite fear and has not discouraged stereotypical views of Arabs, and so on.

The one big effect this has had on me, I mean everything post-9/11, is that I have lost a great deal of faith in the United States. I know there are good people there, obviously, the vast majority are, but from what I have witnessed, there are obviously others in office who will hurt people. It takes a small minority to dupe the majority in going along with them. We've seen where that has lead in the past. I don't want to speculate on where we're heading this time, and my deep hatred for conspiracy theories won't allow me to make any such claims (there are no conspiracies, only things you don't as yet know, because you haven't looked closesly enough), but I don't think we're on the right track.


And wow, I hate when I talk like that. ](*,)

So many words... in a nutshell, please? What does it all mean, Basil?

Yeah, but there is a difference between being an accidental idiot and prepackaging something thats directly related to you. Orientalism, Exoticization, still exist. Lots of reporters/camera men, don't even realize the stereotypes they are victim to and propagate when they do that. The ones that do are biased, but who knows if its in a directly self-serving way. After all, they're not commenting about themselves. Its one thing to think that you're on a mission to "liberate" these people, and that you agree with it, so you film the people you want to "help" (rather than those in jeans, that well, don't suit your vision quite as well). Its a bit different than being the pres, and sending your boys out to manipulate and collect information about you that you then edit to your liking (or Rove's liking) and then send out to news stations to be delivered as "news" from "reporters." I expect bias, that's different than conscious manipulation for self-serving promotion. I'll even go so far as to agree with you that news is always manipulative, but the arguement comes from how conscious and what the intention is too, and that differs.



I don't like the front page reporting very much. I actually like op/ed, "special features" and art/entertainment page alot. I think they say as much about today as the "current events" on the front page. I still read everything, with a grain of salt. I'm a bit more of a browser. I read alot of headlines, once in awhile look further into an article if it piques my attention. In think television news has to be the worst though. Due to expense, viewership wars, illiteracy, who knows. I just always felt it really catered to the lowest common denominator. At least in a paper there is alot of articles and the reader has to be a bit more active about which ones he/she follows through/skips.skims/etc. TV news creates a hierarchy of importance for the reader, and pretty much wittles down the news to five stories. Mostly image and narrative driven, I don't know. I used to grow up on Dan Rather but by late highschool I had completely lost interest in tv news.



Yeah, thats why I'm surprised at your complete loss of faith in news systems. We are still slightly better informed than had we not had these modes of delivering information and knowledge. But, like you said, its about looking into several sources, or cutting out the flowery language surrounding a date/time/number. Talking about it of course, since people point you towards different sources, etc.



Well its not conspiracy, its just noticing certain repetitions of historic experience. I don't think anyone doesn't see it, but on the other hand, history does not repeat itself. It just doesn't, too many facotrs, so it still depends on where to go from here with the warning signs of vague deja-vu. The dupe line of course, I need not reiterate the Grand Inquisitor. Anyways there is some truth to it, me being no excpetion, but varying degrees and a different choice of whom I follow. That's pretty much it. Its unfortunate now, it'll be less so when there are better leaders. Then we'd love if people followed...thats the way the cookie crumbles. Speaking of which, anyone here want to intern for Obama in Illinois or DC? I got an email from a work listserv about it two days ago.

Ahh, who cares. Its from the NY Times, Rush says thats BS, so it must be. :razz:

In other news

Under Bush, liberal bastions a la NY Times rediscover old dirty secrets of journalism as new and blow them out of proportion.