Posted by Mitch Perry on Jul. 20, 2009, at 7:07 am
By Mitch Perry PoHo correspondent
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
Legendary television anchorman Walter Cronkite’s death on Friday at the age of 92 has prompted massive encomiums on his career and how no one figure could ever dominate mass communications like “Uncle Walter” did in the ’60s and ’70s. It also allows us to ponder the state of national television news.
In the immediate days (and weeks) after Michael Jackson’s death last month, America’s broadcast and cable news networks went — predictably — hog wild over the pop superstar’s death. They saw their ratings rise, while also receiving criticism from a lot of quarters that they were overdoing it.
But were you really surprised?
Pardon the expression, but haven’t we seen this movie, err, blanket news coverage before?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 3, 2009, at 8:00 am
I couldn’t have said it any better than Eric Boehlert did:
The idea that the Matthews live-mic “Oh God” utterance should be pounced on as an “aha” moment for the unprofessional press corps is absurd. Not when Rick Santelli, a reporter for CNBC, went on live TV and uncorked an anti-Obama rant and then paraded around on right-wing radio shows for days while concocting stories about being targeted by the White House.
Despite crossing all normal bounds of journalism, Santelli was celebrated in the press as a populist. (Y’know, the Drexel Burnham Lambert kind.) And CNBC seemed to do everything it could to market and hype the rant. (Imagine if MSNBC replayed Matthews’ “Oh God” clip incessantly, bragging about how Matthews had “touched a nerve” with Americans.)
In terms of revealing deep truths about the corporate media, I’d suggest Santelli’s off-kilter tirade, followed by his puffed-up prancing around, and the press corps that cheered him on, told us a helluva lot more abut the press than did Matthews’ split-second “Oh God” utterance.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 25, 2009, at 1:51 pm
So, just why did MSNBC commentator Christ Matthews whisper “oh god” into a hot mic just as La. Gov. Bobby Jindal pranced out of a side room to deliver his rebuttal speech on behalf of the Republicans last night? Did he know just how poorly Jindal was going to perform? How far Jindal would fall short of expectations? How nonsensical his analogy about Hurricane Katrina was? Is Matthews able to see into the future?? If so, Chris, who is going to win the NCAA football championship this season?
Answer: Matthews tells Politico that he gasped because he was “taken aback” by the absurdity of the entrance. “I was taken aback by that peculiar stagecraft, the walking from somewhere in the back of this narrow hall, this winding staircase looming there, the odd anti-bellum look of the scene. Was this some mimicking of a president walking along the state floor to the East Room?”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 22, 2009, at 2:54 pm
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist! Simply because Jindal’s jingoism of “conservative alternative solutions” falls flat after eight years of that crap not working.
Here’s the MTP interviews with Crist and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, done separately.
