Funny Business from Headline News. I chanced to see some odd occurrences on CNN Headline News while checking events today. First, in one half-hour, some female doctor is quoted as condemning alcohol as disastrous to the human body. That story is not repeated the next half hour. Study after study after study has shown that moderate consumption of alcohol has actual, demonstrable, substantial benefits to health, especially as regards helping people cope with stress, but there are always bluenose neo-Prohibitionists trying to worry us about the consumption of even an ounce of alcohol. News media have an obligation to present a balanced view whenever they are so much as tempted to give a neo-Prohibitionist a soapbox.
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Second, Chuck Roberts' script for a story about Dubya's 'legacy' spoke of Abraham Lincoln as being known for "helping to abolish slavery". Huh? Helping? The "Great Emancipator" was only a helper? Tho it may technically be true that slavery was not finally abolished until passage of the 13th Amendment after Lincoln's death, the Civil War effectively did end slavery as an institution, and Lincoln fought that war to its successful conclusion. For Headline News to deny Lincoln recognition as Emancipator is offensive.
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Further, Linda Stouffer, in reading text about the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration relative to the upcoming hurricane season, pronounced "oceanic" as oe.see.áan.ik. Don't these people have dictionaries?
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Newsreaders are paid a lot of money simply to read aloud. They have an obligation to pronounce things right. If you don't say óe.see.yan for "ocean", don't say oe.see.áan.ik.
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Headline News is a very badly run outfit, that has violated its core commitment, to provide a half hour of world and national news 24 hours a day, by pre-empting several hours each weeknite for long-form programming that has nothing to do with a half-hour survey of all top stories. Instead, Nancy Grace talks about particular crime stories she fixates on, and empty-headed morons talk about entertainment 'news' for hours a nite! Despite having months ago abandoned its commitment to headline news at all times, CNN still dares to claim to be giving headline news "24/7". That's a lie.
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Moreover, the editors' news judgment is wacko. Today, for instance, they devoted several minutes to following, live, an aerial rescue of a man trapped on an island in the racing waters of the rain-swollen Los Angeles River (which in the dry season is the barest trickle). How is that national news? I live in New Jersey. I don't care about a local rescue in Los Angeles. I'm glad the guy was saved, but what has that got to do with issues of social policy, which is why I watch news? In like fashion, Headline News has devoted big chunks of time — in one case, well over an hour! — to following car chases on California highways. Of what conceivable importance to someone in New Jersey, Texas, Iowa, or even most parts of California is some stupid car chase? That's not national news. And following it live is preposterous.
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What about the risks of witnessing disaster? Are the editors actually hoping somebody will die because that would be dramatic? What if the guy in the L.A. River had been swept away and drowned? What if the rescuer lowered by helicopter was unable to get or maintain a grip, and the guy dropped to his death? What if a car chase produces a deadly accident, or a confrontation between a carjacker and police that results in a shootout and death? Is that legitimate news coverage, or ghoulish, sado-masochistic entertainment for Nazis?
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The media are dominated by bad people, and that holds for Headline News as much as for the makers of Hollywood "thrillers".
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,455.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:39 PM