Friday, July 9, 2010

The News Creating the News About the News Not Reporting the News the News Created

This annoyed me a bit. Fox News has a story up today about what the rest of the media isn't reporting. They have a bit of a point with the Black Panther story, it sounds like real news but frankly not something I care enough about to even read an article on, which may be why other outlets aren't doing much on it. Outside of Fox's echo chamber, no one gives a damn.

They're way off base with the NASA bit though. That's not news. That's a bad interview with Al Jazeera which NASA Administrator Charles Bolden probably didn't have anything relevant to say to, so tried to take an unusual tack on to make the interview relevant. He made a hash of it, but what does a NASA Administrator really have to say to a network catering to an audience living in countries that don't have space programs? He probably had to do it because refusing it may have been spun into a story by them, but there really isn't much of import to say that would be relevant to the audience, outreach is about the only thing relevant so may as well play it up. This is simply an instance of targeting your message to your audience, and that audience was not meant to be Fox News viewers. Context people, context.

This is pure gotcha programming at its very worst. It's also one of the clearer examples I've seen of the operation of bias and the attempt to create a complete alternate reality for those that have no ability to see the context behind events. Just plain shameful.

3 comments:

  1. I agree. I think there's some point to be made given that there was coverage that DOJ did all its voter rights work defending white people, but the idea that ACORN wasn't covered makes me laugh. Fox and MSNBC are in the complaint business.

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  2. Who ever listens to NASA? That really is gotcha' journalism.

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  3. Funny, SirW. You're right. I just look at the pichers.

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