CBS GIVES UP ON NEWS?

CBS has gone from pathetic to downright outrageous:

CBS News is firing the news producer who cut into prime-time programming Wednesday night to report the death of Yasser Arafat. Viewers were upset over missing the end of "CSI: N.Y."

SOURCE: I Want Media.
5:30:08 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

MORE MUSINGS

Part of a continuing ramble through some ideas about journalism.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the push of mainstream media and the pull of internet (absorbing information as opposed to actively seeking it out) and suggested that more and more people are abandoning the push for the pull.

There have always been people who reject mainstream media. Most of them see a "bias" in media that doesn't reflect their own ideology, or have equated the reality that media are businesses with the "reality" that journalism is less pure and more market-driven because of that. Both could but true, but not to the extent some critics claim.

I suspect more people have lost their connection to mainstream media because of the failure of some traditions of journalism. Jay Rosen has written (and published other's writings) about how objectivity has become a burden to mainstream media. I don't need to repeat any of that. Go read.

There are other traditions that are also undercutting media, including the inordinate weight given to the "official" view or the political presence. Last night, a TV news show had a report on a local gathering to mark the death of Yassar Arafat. It was a presented as a meeting of local Palestinians, but the only two faces shown were of white North Americans. And the only speaker to receive any air time was a white, North American politician.

(This is a double failure: the newscast not only did not give me the voice of the participants, it failed to give me the voice of the community, settling for a two-fer — a politician who is a member of the majority.)

Without the internet, such old media practices were fine. There was no other source. Now I can "pull." Not only that, I can pull as easily as I can switch on the TV news.
3:06:32 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

WATCHING WAR

Kevin Sites has independent photos and coverage from Fallujah at his web site. His lede:

Even before first light -- U.S. Marines, soldiers and Iraqi National Guard troops swarmed into Falluja. Tanks and heavily armored Bradley Fighting used their main guns to blow up cars and buses parked down side streets -- just in case they might be booby-trapped -- packed with explosives.

"This is a frigging ghost town," says Corporal Steven Wolf, a squad leader for the vehicle the CAAT (Combined Anti Armor Team) Platoon. The streets are deserted. But there are some exceptions. The dead.

Who is Sites? This is from his bio:

Kevin Sites is a pioneering, multi-media journalist who often works as a one-man unit, using portable, digital technology to report, write, edit and transmit his stories from conflict areas around the world. He has covered war zones in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.

I haven't heard of him before, but he's bookmarked now.

SOURCE: Andrew Sullivan.
12:33:14 PM  LINK TO THIS POST