I was watching Headline News. One of the top stories was that the Northern Alliance claimed to have made advances in to taliban territory which was later denied by the Talis. On the left side of the screen was the headline for the story:
NORTHERN ALLIANCE
Movin’ on Up
What the hell’s this about? Is CNN joking around while we’re dealing with very serious issues. It might have been “cute” during the days of Gary Condit and Ken Starr, but not during war time.
All I hear about now is how the world changed since Sept 11, but CNN, at least, is pretty much the same. They are simplifying important stories (I’m sure you guys have seen examples of this) and going for overkill in the lead stories.
I remember watching CNN for an hour and hearing nothing except Anthrax, Anthrax, Anthrax, while there were other extremely important and urgent stories that needed covering.
CNN (the symbol of the media industry) and the other news channels have been demanding instant-gratification from our military planners although Rumsfeld and Bush both said from the beginning that this would not be a quick war and that there would be hidden successes.
All it seems we have are bad journalists/reporters with a lot of money. In America I expect fair and balanced coverage of the issues, reporting of important news events (not just any news event), and tact while dealing with sensitive issues. Instead we get animation, music, recaps of what happened back then (although the story is still not over), “cute” little jokes, etc., etc., etc.
Bill Maher was complaining about this (as well as Congressional bickering). His basic point was that if the media and our leadership are still acting the same as they were pre-September 11, then we are pretty much in the same boat we were in back then.