The oft-repeated question that’s driving me batshit at the moment is, “What is [the President/Mayor/Governor/Chief of Police]'s mood right now?”
His mood is disbelief, anger, and shock, just like the rest of the fucking nation!What the fuck do you expect them to say?
“Well, Tonya, he’s feeling mostly jealous, tinged with lust and little bit of joy. Oh, and he wants a cheeseburger.”
Okay, maybe this is a good time to bash the press, but maybe not. Remember that this is an incredibly high stress situation and story; possibly taking the highest toll on the emotional scale of any news story in our history. They’ve been out there covering the story 24 hours and more, without sleep, and with high demands on their skills, and an even greater demand to attempt to stay objective.
I’m not going to say that they’re always right, or that they don’t sometimes say dumb things, but considering the kind of pressure they’re under, maybe we could cut them a little slack this time.
There’ll be two made for TV movies, at least one of which will feature Valerie Bertinelli as a single mom with an important municipal job who must handle the crisis and get her kids to safety at the same time. At least one of the kids will be snotty 15-year-old-girl who ends up hugging Bertinelli and crying “I love you, Mom!”
By next February there will have been at least three awful country-and-western songs about the event. At least one will used the term “child’s eyes” rhymed with “high rise.” Around the same time, a rap star will release a song about it that samples an old Police song.
By next June a Hollywood spectacular will come out. Leelee Sobieski will deliver a wooden performance in a key supporting role.
Uri Geller will claim that he had something to do with it, somehow.
Pierre Salinger will claim the airliners that hit the World Trade Center were actually B-52s, or maybe they were F-15s, or hell, maybe they were Sopwith Camels. Art Bell and/or Whitley Strieber will claim aliens were involved. Conspiracy theories will abound, and eventually a popular one will be made into a movie by Oliver Stone that blames the CIA and connects it all to the invention of AIDS by the CDC, crack traffic, and Gary Condit. Note: I am not joking.
Some idiot will say Nostradamus predicted… oh wait, that’s already happened.
John Edwards, that bastard, will have special episodes of “Crossing Over” during which he will exclusively exploit families of the terror attack victims so he can make money off of other human being’s grief.
Some dimwit for a major entertainment rag will try to interview Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, or Tony Shaloub about “The Siege” and will ask “do you think you learned anything making that movie that will help Arab-Americans be more accepted blah blah blah?” All three will brush the dimwit off; Willis will tell him to “go fuck yourself.”
Reader’s Digest will abridge… something about it.
Believe me, the tacky, naked profiteering has just begun.
Euty has a point, of course, as usual.
However, one of the 24-hour-news channels last night (I think it was Fox) had an anchorman who shouldn’t have been there. He was perfectly coiffed, and rather than reporting information he seemed to be using this high-profile viewership opportunity to demonstrate his own intelligence and command of the situation. Instead, he succeeded in making himself look like a buffoon, and obstructed the “real” journalists’ efforts to produce useful information.
His worst offense was repeatedly comparing the blast zone to “the surface of the moon.” He was obviously proud of this metaphor, and used it at every conceivable opportunity. Never mind that the surface of the moon doesn’t have twisted girders, concrete, fire trucks, searchlights, open-air fires, or any of the other accoutrements of a terrorist attack and the subsequent rescue/cleanup effort.
Surface of the moon, my ass. Everybody knows the surface of the moon is covered in tiny spaceships and helmeted raccoons…
I was highly annoyed yesterday with some of the press during the aftermath of the WTCs collapsing. I saw one reporter standing near the emergency room entrance, I think it was in NY, and they’re filming people being unloaded off of an ambulance. I changed the station, because I think in a situation like that, a reporter and camera crew will be a distraction to the EMTs and all who are trying to do their jobs.
Then there was a reporter, it might have been on the Fox network, who was talking to a fireman and a policeman who had been working on the rescues, and one of them said he couldn’t find his partner. She kept asking, “Can you give us an estimate of how many paople are lost?”, even thought they said, several times, that they did not want to speculate on that or discuss it. The, at the end of the interview, she says, “Did you see any dead?”, to which they just said, “Yes.”
Frickin’ ghouls!
What’s up with Dan Rather? He wouldn’t air the Condit/Chandra story because it would be in poor taste, but it’s perfectly acceptable to show video of people plummeting to their deaths from the World Trade Center? He’s a despicable human being.
Granted, this is a high stress situation, but these assholes were asking these questions just a few hours after it happened.
All that I’m saying is, quit pointing the finger at anyone but the terrorists.
evilhanz mentioned the one point where I think the media have gone way over the line: showing people jumping out of the WTC. Other than that, I think the media has done a fairly decent job is a horrible situation. Also keep in mind how much of the networks is based in New York.
Point taken, and yes I agree. I can hardly wait until Sunday morning when the pundits get ahold of this big time. Right now everyone’s trying to armchair quarterback this thing, second guessing authorities and people who might actually be in possession of facts about the whole mess. And playing the blame game of trying to put blame for whatever on the press, security guards, the intelligence community; anybody but the terrorists themselves.
Sure there are some bad things going on with the media, but Peter Jennings explained that yesterday the news agencies were sharing information to keep the public informed, quell unfounded rumors, and reduce the FUD (as much as possible in a situation like that). That’s why you see the same clips on all the stations.
I also saw an ABC reporter who was asking a woman about the WTC collapse. She talked about seeing the plane hit, and then seeing people jump from the building. She broke down at this point and couldn’t go on. The newscaster gave her a hug and comforted her as the camera cut off.
I think the media did a good job, all things considered.
The worst kind of questions are the ones where they ask some distraught person:
“Your mother and 4 year old sister were on the airplane when it went up in flames, how did that make you feel?”
Exactly. If you leave the front door open while you’re gone, should you complain if your house is robbed?
Overall, I have been impressed with the news coverage. From the onset, they have all been pretty good about not rumor mongering, but getting informtion out as it became avalible–a thin line to walk.
This local radio guy I heard yesterday should be shot, though. He was obviously super excited about the whole thing, and was blindly repeating whatever rumors any crackpot called in (Yeah, gas is going up to $5/Gal I hear, better go fill up now) and calling for us all to go kick ass–though it is not clear what ass. Brown ass is brown ass, I suppose.
As the “hard news” dries up and starts going back to its regular times, the soft news will take over, and that is going to be bad.
I always hear people complain about this specific example of media bufoonery yet in all my years of watching and listening to broadcast news I have never, ever seen or heard any reporter ask such a ridiculous question to a victim of a tragic experience. There is certainly no dearth of broadcast journalism’s inanities, so let’s stick to the facts please.
OK, here’s one I actually saw yesterday – reporter interviewing a kid (looked about 16) and his sister, who were distraught because their father had died in the collapse. Ignoring the insanity of interviewing this poor kid at all, let me relate the unbeliveable question asked by the reporter: “So did you love your dad?”
Peter Jennings just said that ABC News has a policy against ever asking that exact question. That doesn’t mean it (or other questions like the one shelbo quotes) is never asked, especially when dealing with local news. Sometimes the reports just don’t know what to say and they think they have to ask something and out pops an inappropriate question.
In the Pittsburgh area, near the 4th crash, the stations were near the site, bitching on-air that the police wouldn’t let them go to the crash sight.
RE: RickJay’s Post
How about a SD pact. When the yellow journalism begins, boycott it, the advertisters and the stations and let them know about it.
As for made for tv or movies of this horror, let’s, please, boycott them. And let the producers know that a boycott is forthcoming.
There are enough SDers to make a difference. A senior Senator once told me that all it takes to get him to assign a staffer to any issue is five letters. Count em, five. Advertisers have been known to quit shows with only 100 irate complaints.
Thanks, Cervaise. That gave me my second slightly hysterical chuckle of the day and I needed it. My first one was when Mayor Giuliani said the subway under 14th was still closed “primarily…umm…because we closed it.”
AFA the press is concerned, please remember that along with the interviewees, the interviewers are also shocked and confused. That ANYONE can make sense during this is astonishing. </nanny> On the other hand, yes, there have been some really stupid questions asked, but there always are.
Someone mentioned this in another thread which I can no longer locate. A reporter was interviewing a terrorism expert, asking how buildings could be protected from this kind of airborne attack. The expert responded “Well, if we could keep planes from flying into them … that would really help”.
I wish I had seen this exhcange with my own eyes.