The media has its priorities; are they yours?

August 18, 2006

I wasn’t terribly surprised when the national [tag]media[/tag] hyperventilated over the latest details in the [tag]JonBenet[/tag] [tag]Ramsey[/tag] [tag]murder[/tag] case. In fact, it’s been a fairly slow summer for over-the-top media fluff fests — I can’t remember the last time I was warned about an epidemic of shark attacks — so I suppose new outlets were due for some obsessive, melodramatic reporting.

That is, until yesterday afternoon, when a federal judge issued a controversial ruling about one of the biggest political stories of the year — the president’s warrantless-search program. Clearly, this is the kind of major development about a major public policy fight, in an election year, that will dominate the news, right? Wrong.

All three major TV networks led their evening news with stories on JonBenet Ramsey’s death and the comments made by arrested teacher John Mark Karr. The networks offered multiple segments and numerous expert analyses to provide in-depth coverage on the legal case. The NSA decision received only a passing mention from two of the newscasts, while ABC devoted a full segment to it.

ABC devoted twice as much time to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story. More egregiously, CBS offered seven times as much airtime to Ramsey as it did to the [tag]NSA[/tag] story, while NBC devoted 15 times more airtime.

When TP says the NSA decision only received a “passing mention,” that’s quite literally true.

Consider last night’s CBS Evening News, for example. The network devoted all of its first two segments to the Ramsey murder, for a total of six minutes and 45 seconds. It devoted an additional two minutes to a report on the White House “talking positively about Iraq,” and two-and-a-half minutes about attaching smog-monitors to the backs of pigeons (seriously). The NSA story got 25 seconds — which is exactly what CBS devoted to Mel Gibson being sentenced in his DUI case.

NBC Nightly News offered a similar story. The first seven-and-a-half minutes went exclusively to the Ramsey story. The NSA story got 25 seconds, which, coincidentally, was also the exact amount of time NBC devoted to the [tag]Mel Gibson[/tag] story.

A Faiz noted, CBS host Bob Schieffer wrapped up the Ramsey segment, assuring the audience, “We’ll stay on this case. That’s for sure.”

What a relief.

This is the end of constitutional democracy. Not with a bang but with a wimper.

But really, if the story was that there wasn’t a stay on the decision and the program had to stop right then and there, the story might have had more coverage. But for now, all the story is about is one Federal Judge realizing that General Michael V. Hayden’s (Air Force, rtd, currently Director of the CIA) warrantless wiretapping of Americans and legal residents getting calls from overseas from numbers the NSA thinks are related to terrorism isn’t legal because Congress set the law in 1978 to allow such wiretaps under warrant by a special court that has only rejected 5 warrant requests ever.

So where’s the news?

  • Stop expecting corporate-owned media to do anything other than pander to stupidity. There’s been a race to the bottom and now we’re sitting on it. Perhaps once they’ve been around a few times with death squads, people might start to realize the value of civil liberties, but not before.

  • And the sorry thing was that it was clear in the first couple of hours that the JonBenet thing was a phony confession and thus not even newsworthy, much less obsessionworthy.

    I keep remembering that Iran hostage countdown that went on on the evening news throughout the election year between Carter and Reagon. There are any number of issues that warrant that treatment now. The Iraq War, Day 1248, as CB mentioned. The illegal spying issue, day whoknowwhat. Brush Clearing day 420.

    Another anomaly struck me the other day. There is speculation that Barry Bonds (of whom I am no fan) might be indicted for lying to Congress about steroids. This makes me wonder about that group of oil executives who lied to Congress about something of much greater national import (pun intended). Where’s the blowback. BushCo doesn’t do blowback to rich people. It just does blow..Jobs is an excellent leader for Apple, did I mention that.

  • PBS was no better, although at least they didn’t waste much time with Ramsey. MacNiel-Lehrer thought the signing of a pension reform bill was more important than the NSA story.

  • There’s been a race to the bottom and now we’re sitting on it.
    –jimBOB

    They just haven’t hit the bottom … they’ve hit the bottom and started to dig.

    I don’t expect everyone in this country to be a political junkie like most of us here, but … damn.

    How in the holy hell is white girl from a rich family who died a decade ago more important than a ruling that states the leaders of this country broke federal law and several parts of the Consitution? Is this what we’ve come to?

    Of course, the next question is along the lines of the chicken and the egg:

    Did the American public stop caring about politics, and is the media just reflecting that lack of caring?

    Or did the media stop caring about politics and are the people just reflecting that lack of caring?

  • Just goes to show that anti-trust investigations into who really owns the media these days should be a top priority for the new Congress. And not a moment too soon!

  • But Unholy Moses, she’s blonde! Blonde white girls always go to the top of the list.

  • Unholy Moses: How in the holy hell is white girl from a rich family who died a decade ago more important than a ruling that states the leaders of this country broke federal law and several parts of the Consitution? Is this what we’ve come to?

    yup. and it makes me ill.

  • In case readers found it odd, I wanted to mention that, yes, I bumped up the time on this post so it would be on top.

  • “In case readers found it odd, I wanted to mention that, yes, I bumped up the time on this post so it would be on top.” – CB

    So the end of rationale media coverage is more important than Chuck Schumer wanting Lieberman in the Senate?

    Well, I can’t argue with that. America is losing it’s fourth amendment protections, it’s first amendment rights, and it’s status as a two party democracy and all the news can concern itself with is one girl dead for a decade when thousands of girls die or go missing every year.

    Just sad.

  • Curmudgeon as usual is right.

    But the congress doesn’t investigate anything until there’s a media storm about it, and the media will investigate its owners right after Robertson coughs up Phase 2 or when hell freezes over, whichever comes later. No media, no media storm. No media storm, no congressional action (not that we get much anyway).

    Without serious competition among the media, the already addled American people will only get only the information they want us to have. You can literally see the collusion between them when you examine how nearly all their commercial breaks are timed to occur at the same moments. And of course there are only slight variations between the big three networks about what they cover.

    Information is the lynchpin of Democracy, and it was barely hanging on in the early 90’s, but then Clinton let the Republicans finally pull it out. We now have a handful of corporations controlling the national debate, and they keep trying to merge even further.

    It feels like we are rolling down a steep hill in the dark. Without a public fed by reasonably accurate information, there is no check or balance. Maybe the death of MSM credibility and the rise of the blogs will provide some light before we fall into full blown fascism, if not we may be doomed to repeat the German experience. Only this time the fascists will have advanced computers and RFID technology.

  • And lots and lots of nukular bombs. And “the faithful” set and ready in the air force to deliver such things.

  • What’s the likelihood that the Supreme Court will uphold some of the Detroit judge’s findings? Or will the SC vacate it by ruling that the appellants don’t have standing because they can’t prove their communications were tapped?

    If the Supreme Court actually goes ahead and hears the arguments, the BIG question is whether it will buy Bush’s expansion of the presidency beyond the reach of Congress, the law, or the courts themselves.

    Do they really want to hamstring themselves that way?

  • Well, you could consider that the vast majority don’t think that an official finding that Mr. Bush had been up to unconstitutional mischief is even “news” at all. On the other hand, a demented pedophile and a chance to again show us all those sexy pictures of that poor little Barbie Doll scampering across the stage — now THAT’s worth some air time. Feh.

    Oh, and in case no one else has mentioned it, the Jon-Benet fest on the three major nets may have been interesting, but it was the height of gravitas compared to what was going on down in the cable channels where it’s been “all Jon-Benet all the time.”

  • Now, TV news did have time to break away from JonBenet long enough to report on Mel Gibson’s plea deal. The question to me is the argument that the media always gives about giving the public what it wants. Is that really true? Do ratings bump when a JonBenet or Natalee Holloway story goes bonkers? If so, a lot of the blame has to be placed at the feet of the TV consumer. It seems clear to me by now that people who actually are interested in news developments of substance have largely migrated to the Web to search out the stories. The people I feel sorry for are older news junkies who haven’t embraced the computer revolution and have to depend on piss-poor local papers and TV news for their information.

  • News is gossip.

    So on one hand I understand the human buzz about little-miss-what’s-her-face.

    On the other hand…

    This is an abomination….
    A titilation…
    A Brave New World approximation.

    To put it all in perspective consider this thought experiment:

    Imagine there is a mass of matted trash twice the size of Texas floating out in the Pacific somewhere.

    My bet is that you won’t hear about until a bunch of American college teenagers visit it on Spring break, get drunk on Bud Light, and dance topless on it…

    I think you get my point:

    Modern American media priorities…
    The least common denominator…
    All the news that is fit to sell…

    But to drive it all home…
    I often like to ask:

    And this, the culture that created global warming is also going to be the culture that can solve it?

    Fat chance in a thining world!

    You really don’t have a chance.
    In other words: I am writing words to a moribund culture that hasn’t realized it’s Easter Island future.

    Your children are all dead.
    Your children’s dreams are dead.
    The planet as you know it is dead.

    Any how…

    Did you hear that Joan Benet’s mom got to hear the news about the killer before she passed away?

    That makes me happy too…

  • On the tombstone of the Republic will be the epitaph “Killed By A Story Arc”.

  • I watched the CBS news and PBS too. Very disappointing and I was quite unhappy with the slant the commentators gave the story. It’s too bad because the Jonbenet story is probably bogus, and even if it isn’t, who cares? It’s a ten year old murder commited by a first class creep. It has no national or historical significance beyond showcasing sloppy police work. Meanwhile the President of the United States has broken the law and a Federal Judge has called him on his misdeeds and no one notices? What’s going on here?

  • This is a prime example of why I barely watch network or cable news programs anymore. I’d expect this kind of lengthy coverage from Entertainment Tonight or some other fluff show, but not from “serious” news programs. These days, I pretty much limit myself to reading from online news sources so that I can pick and choose which stories to follow and which to ignore. It saves me a lot of time and aggravation.

  • ***What’s going on here?***
    ——————————————GRACIOUS

    It’s called “the media are all evil, slobbering lap-minions of Herr Bush.”

    It’s good to see that a federal judge has finally called Herr Bush and his cronies on these clear violations of the law. But the media seems to be playing a wicked version of the old axiom, “if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Only this version works along the lines of “if the president gets nailed for crimes against the Constitution and it doesn’t get covered by the media, is he really a criminal?” Fortunately, no matter how hard the MSM try to cover this up for their “Prince on the Potomac,” it’ll get out. People will still hear about it. There’s still 81 days left until the midterms—and news travels fast….

  • The Ramsey case is sensational and distracting to the course of our country. I doubt this Karr’s culpabilty.

    To paraphrase the late Johnnie Cochrane: “If the DNA doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

  • Why do you think so many people come to places like this for their news. I stopped watching TV news a few years ago for exactly reasons like this. My personal memory of this goes back to the days of the OJ Simpson trial dominating the news for months on end, to my utter disgust even at a young age.

    These kinds of sensationalist stories are great to them. They require no courage and no critical thinking. They are the reality TV of news coverage.

    Most of the people I know (I’m 28 but in school so most of the people I know are 20-24) do not watch TV news AT ALL. We get our news from blogs, from mainstream news sites, from links IM’d to each other.

    We do not care that TV news offers nothing to stimulate our brain. We WANT them to keep doing the same crap. We love stats that show your average Daily Show viewer knows more about the world than your average Fox News viewer. We WANT ALL of their rating to go down over time. We WANT them to become more sensationalist to keep their dwindling audiences. We WANT what we see as their outmoded form of distribution to DIE and go out of business.

    I’m just not sure why so many people see it as the fall of our democracy. We see it as the rise of our generation’s.

    Their ways are nothing new. Noam Chomsky has had this right for a long time.

  • Did the American public stop caring about politics, and is the media just reflecting that lack of caring?

    Hell no, we have not stopped caring! Actually we have just started caring.

    As of September 11, 2001, I was a 30 year old, PlayStation playing, internet junkie who moonlighted as a working mom with a husband, two kids and a dog. I was happily plugged into the matrix and couldn’t have cared less.

    But after September 11, I kept looking to the media to answer certain questions. I was watching the nightly news and scanning our local papers and none of the questions I had ever got ASKED let alone answered. In the meantime I was going on with my life, thinking that eventually the media would uncover whatever I needed to know.

    At first I fell for the line that they couldn’t divulge certain things because of National Security. I live in Cincinnati and when George Bush came to Union Terminal and gave his speech outlining his reasons for the war, especially that Iraq was developing nukes, God help me, I believed him. Despite being a lifelong Democrat, despite not having voted for him, I was glued to the T.V. and I fell for his spiel hook, line and sinker.

    You have to remember what it was like at that time. We had just come off an exceedingly divisive election. Most folks, Democrat and Republican were looking for any way to keep the country for being so polarized and to find a way to rally behind this president for better or for worse. What better way than to defend ourselves and go after the folks who terrorized us on 9/11 (cue the crying eagle and ribbon magnets and flags on cars).?

    The first time I heard the words *sand nigger* I knew that I better wake up and pay attention. As an African American I know how easy it is for white folks, even well meaning white folks, to tolerate the deaths of brown people. And it’s taken not the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s or any of the coalition of the willing or the terrorist attacks in other countries but the deaths of over 2500 Americans to actually get us to want to quit. We are a callous people and it never ceases to amaze me that it’s only our relatively small body count that matters in relation to the instability we’ve caused, the civil war we’ve started, the destruction and chaos that is yet again the status quo in the Middle East, and ready to label anyone and everyone who doesn’t agree with the U.S.’s twisted aims and policies a terrorist.

    Mind you, once upon a time I was just the clueless mom who was going through life not caring about any of this. But now I know what I know and not only can this knowledge never be taken from me but they’ve awakened the sleeping heart of a patriot. I will never be a goose-stepping nodding my head in agreement anything you say Mr. President person again with my head buried in the sand while our Life, Liberty, and Democratic Republic go to hell in a handbasket.

    I know now that the American Media, who we once looked to as the Fourth Estate is now simply a national branch of Stenography for the White House. The media suppression has been blatant for years now, but anyone still in denial after the Stephen Colbert blackout is just a fool. There is no longer a Free Press. If you’re not reading news on the internet, if you’re not reading blogs (the ones you agree with and the ones you don’t) if you’re not reading foreign news, BBC, Australia, India, Lebanon, Israel then you are not getting the whole picture.

    The sooner we all realize this, the sooner we can get on with the revolution. I, personally, am not willing to wait for the Bush Admin to appeal. If they refuse to abide by the decision of this judge, then it is long past time we took back our government by any means necessary.

  • Deborah: You are articulate and you are beautiful, and the revolution has already started. The trickle is becomming a river and will soon be a sunami. You are definitely not alone. We will change things and we are legion.

  • “…the Fourth Estate is now simply a national branch of Stenography for the White House.” — Deborah

    Love it.

  • Wasn’t homeland security involved in the arrest of this guy? Could it be this is just another distraction engineered by the Bush administration to distract the public?

    Look! A shiny ball!

  • I am sick and tired of how the media treats JonBenet like a freaking saint. Children of all races are killed daily. Hello! There’s a war on, and we are still obsessed with a girl we will not let rest in peace even after her whore for a mother kicked the bucket.

    I wrote this poem to satirize the people I truly believe are guilty.
    The rest appears on my myspace, because I’m too decent a person to copy it all here.

    Poetry corner

    DEAD BLONDE IN THE BASEMENT

    by T. L. Young

    Daddy left his Mastercard in his little girl’s piggy bank,
    now Mama’s gonna lick her behind.
    But now the same way Daddy did.

    Mama getting out her little corkscrew fro mthe kitchen,
    all shiny and silvery and twisted.
    Rammed it into the back of her baby girl’s neck.
    Her throat fit in the palm of Mama’s hand likee the penis shaft
    of a fully grown baby bull.
    Like the days she used to jerk off the catttle down on Grandpa’s farm.
    She licked up the bull semen the same way
    she licked up her baby girl’s blood.
    Salty on her tongue . . .

    T. L. Young

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