Can't Stop With the Sharks
I don't know why this drives me so nuts, but it does.
Again catching up with the news, the media are, as predicted, in a shark-attack frenzy. As happened during the Summer of the Shark,tm a dramatic first attack leads to reports of progressively less severe and interesting subsequent attacks to keep the "story" alive. So a teenage girl was killed and then a few days later a teenage boy lost his leg. Now they're reporting a guy who was "bitten on the ankle." Next up: guy stubs his big toe on a spiney dogfish.
I guess I keep blogging about this because it's the intersection of two of my favorite topics: the ocean and what a bunch of losers the news media are.
posted by MarkCi @ 5:15 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
The shark attacks are like the stupid focus on kidnapped kids we've had lately. Grabs attention and helps sell advertising while not focusing on Iraq and other embarassing national news. Is the media the victim of governmental bullying, or are they just sold to advertising dollars and editorializing is part of the package? Most viewers will be in agreement about a shark attack - it's bad. If you report on Iraq, you'll wind up with more viewers thinking you're biased one way or another.
Also, tragedy seems to be what is being called for on stations these days. I only see cable TV on rare occasions, but last month I had the opportunity to watch TV for a few days. The stations were littered with mean-spirited "reality TV" competitions and video showing nasty, violent material. Even Animal Planet had a show about horrible animal injuries including a severely broken-legged horse and a car-injured elephant. The latter being particularly bothersome to me, for some reason.
But I saw very little in the news or elsewhere about anything actually important. Oh sure - video of a car bombing in Iraq and some "fair and balanced" posturing as well. It's sad that "fair and balanced" now means "Give the bare bones of some political issue and have two guys take liberal(progressive) and conservative spins on it." No other opinions matter, right?
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