Why do Americans think journalism is a complete and total joke? Maybe because news organizations treat the most serious, somber news as a a complete and total joke. Just look at this from ABC News's "The Note" today:
"Brides gotta run, planes gotta stray, and cable news networks gotta find a way to fill a lot of programming hours as cheaply as possible...We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering. And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans...What is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage."
Let me reiterate how unbelievable this actually is: A MAJOR AMERICAN MEDIA OUTLET HAS NOW DECLARED THAT THEY SIMPLY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN LETTING THE CARNAGE IN IRAQ "BREAK THROUGH" IN THEIR NEWS COVERAGE - AS IF IT IS SIMPLY NOT NEWSWORTHY. You can just imagine the pathetic newsroom attitude: we don't cover cats getting stuck in trees, we don't birthday parties at the local McDonalds, and we don't cover America's multi-billion dollar war in the Mideast.
Sorry America, the insulated, out-of-touch, Washington media is simply uninterested in providing any real coverage about the war. Because remember, the media has to be "very deferential" because "no one want[s] to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."
Truly nauseating.
UPDATE: One thing to consider, in the interest of absolute fairness. ABC's The Note wasn't necessarily claiming THEY didn't take the Iraq War seriously "because it's hard." They were letting it be known that they thought the media as a whole won't take it seriously (which, granted, is still a troubling indictment coming from people in the media itself who do, in fact, know the thinking, and who do establish conventional wisdom for other reporters). That said, ABC itself has taken the war as seriously as the rest of them, and is, in general, no worse than the rest of them (in fact, in certain respects it has been better). But that doesn't undermine the overall point, which is not to target one network, but to try to let the media in general know that an attitude of complacency in the future toward the quagmire in Iraq is unacceptable. Let's hope they get the message that we are watching - and expecting more.
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