We’ve finally found traces of the two Blue Istari!
Alas, they were lost as they traveled to the far reaches of Middle Earth at the bidding of Trumpo the Orange, the Istari that everyone knows was the best one even though the loremasters and their Fake News talk about Saruman and Radagast and Gandalf (who was a pedophile who had a secret room where he drained the blood of hobbits in the basement of the Prancing Pony).
The Daily Show bids farewell to Mr Dobbs, the greatest broadcaster North Korea never had…
That was pretty amazing, but let’s institute a 2-click rule before anything the with Trump’s voice in it, OK? I’d much rather open a PDF accidentally than hear his voice.
What gets me is that, I don’t recall Bartiromo being a total nutcase, which is what she’s become. Hell, even right wing hack Larry Kudlow, who never hid his Reagan conservatism even on his old shows with Jim Cramer, never quite stooped to her level - and he carried Trump’s water in the White House.
Dobbs was among the very first to introduce white Christian nationalism into the mainstream, with his nightly harangues about illegal immigration and outsourcing.
Before that, he was pretty much Neil Cavuto before Neil Cavuto.
Others are wondering that:
I haven’t watched her since she left CNBC, but this is really disappointing. Back then, she seemed like the type who would cut this stuff to pieces, not prop it up.
(Although TBH I always though Erin Barnett was a better reporter.)
I weened myself off of most mainstream US media, writing off most of it as trash that’s just designed to get viewers. Cable news was clickbait before clickbait.
But back in the 1980s, CNN was actually a very serious and watchable product. Sheesh, Lou Dobbs - yes, that Lou Dobbs - was actually a serious, monotone reporter who provided some sort of analysis of daily business news topics.
After living outside the US for a few years (2002-06) I was stunned at the transformation of Dobbs the Moneyline guy to Dobbs the right wing shock jock. It wasn’t long after that even semi-serious reporters were following him into the sewer.
I think the lesson in all this is that business reporters are as ill equipped to report political news as businessmen are to run a government.
That’s not at all true in my experience, though it seems to be in this. I have a number of friends who worked at newspapers and magazine business desks who ended up fine as domestic and international political reporters for papers like the New York Times and Washington Post. One went from business to the Moscow Times to being a well-respected professor of Russian politics that occasionally pops up on news stations like CNN. Good reporters are reporters and adaptable. It’s largely the same skill set, just a different topic.
J’onn S’tewart
You don’t think a business reporter might be inclined to think government should be run like a business?
I gave up on cable news during the Persian Gulf War. It was like their filter for what was newsworthy got broken and it’s never been repaired. I’ll see cable news occasionally since then when someone has it on, but I’m always underwhelmed.
Currently I get 95% of my news from NPR and The Economist, with a little L.A. Times and BBC News on the side.
In general, I don’t think so, no. The experience with my friends/colleagues does not bear that out. (I used to work for a business newspaper a long while ago as a photographer. OK, one of my colleagues ended up becoming the editor-in-chief of a big Rupert Murdoch paper, so you’ve got him, but I’m fairly certain even he doesn’t think government should be run like a business, either. But the guy who ended up a professor of Russian politics was very very much liberal/progressive and absolutely would not advise running government as a business. He was well to the left of me). He was a crack business reporter, though, because, well, he was a good reporter. And business news IS news and is interesting. You can cover business without believing the government should be run like one.)
Ditto your sources, and agree that the Persian Gulf War changed the dynamic forever.
I also noticed how, gradually, the reporters who provided thoughtful but “controversial” commentary, like Peter Arnett, were increasingly vilified and marginalized.
I know that there was never really a golden age of completely unbiased journalism and that capitalist/corporate influence has always acted as a force on good reporting, but US news has increasingly gone from being a profession to an entertainment product intended to complement other types of entertainment.
Should an orthodontist think that the Coast Guard should be run like a dental clinic?
With this statement you might as well say that you gave up on cable news period. (not that that’s a bad thing) Pre-Gulf war, cable news was barely a thing. it wasn’t until CNN was lucky enough to be the only network with people on the ground for a story big enough to fill hours of time that cable news actually competed with network news.
The problem that cable news has is that most days there really isn’t enough news to actually fill a 24 hour cycle. So they have to come up with blather and “analysis” to fill up the time, even if its really just saying the same things over and over in different ways, or trying auger what the fates have in store in a manner only slightly more accurate (and repulsive) than goat entrails.
Sure there is. They are just limited in their concept of news, and in which countries are worth hearing about.
I agree, and then some.
I think the news – way back when – told us a version of what they thought we needed to know. It wasn’t always profitable, but that wasn’t always the point.
Now they tell us a version of what their audience wants to hear. And to the extent their audience has the attention span (or breadth of interests, global perspective, and IQ) of a lab rat on meth, breadth, depth, and actual analysis are a (financial) losing proposition.
I think the major news outlets have become little more than data-driven marketing firms not too dissimilar to (from ?) Amazon or Facebook.
I think the above is relevant to Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Tucker, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, OAN, Newmax, etc. It’s all virtually clickbait designed to drive advertising rates and revenues.
We have 31 (read: a nearly infinite number, but the top X players own Y% of the eyeballs) flavors now – something for everybody.
At the expense of the audience, the truth, and the nation. Should there really be 31 flavors of the truth ? Another thread for another day.
I’m not arguing that they’re all equally guilty, but neither am I parsing or ranking here 