The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Politics and other such topical creams.
Post Reply
Flex
User avatar
Mechano-Man of the Future
Posts: 35802
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 2:50pm
Location: The Information Superhighway!

The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Flex »

Figured we could do with a catch-all thread for general media criticism. I'll start with what's actually a pretty kickass moment on - where of all places - the floor of US Congress:
[youtube][/youtube]
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.co ... ?ref=fpblg

Awesome. Well, the outburst. Obviously, the media is a total choke job.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Rat Patrol
User avatar
Unknown Immortal
Posts: 15431
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 9:23pm
Location: A flat burning junkheap for twenty square miles

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Rat Patrol »

lolz, Patches. lolz.


Ohheyguyslooksomethingshiny!...
[youtube][/youtube]

BostonBeaneater
User avatar
Autonomous Insect Cyborg Sentinel
Posts: 11944
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 7:24pm
Location: Between the moon and New York City

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by BostonBeaneater »

Aww, look at Patches. He's doing it.
Image

Spiff
User avatar
Mostly Nekkid
Posts: 4385
Joined: 16 Jun 2008, 11:23am
Location: In the Spiff Bunker

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Spiff »

By the time I had finished my Master's degree in Journalism in the 1990s, I had learned several things:

1. I went in thinking "objective journalism" was a good, workable model. But it is, of course, a myth ... and it sucks.

2. TV programming is developed and judged solely on its ability to keep viewers around between commercials.

3. Mainstream media are no longer opinion leaders, but are opinion followers. (It's debatable whether they ever were opinion leaders).

4. For-profit journalism always, always leads to an inferior product.

5. Journalists who think the first sentences of their stories are "ledes" are pretentious jerkwads.

I learned a few other things, too, and will contribute them as I think of them.
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

-- There's no fairytale ending with cocaine.

Dr. Medulla
User avatar
Atheistic Epileptic
Posts: 115992
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 2:00pm
Location: Straight Banana, Idaho

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Spiff, can you comment on the importance of the trenchcoat for getting the story right?
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Rat Patrol
User avatar
Unknown Immortal
Posts: 15431
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 9:23pm
Location: A flat burning junkheap for twenty square miles

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Rat Patrol »

Everybody I went to J-school with during the Whitewater era wanted to be a cable pundit. I saw too many profs sadly reach for the bottle of whiskey in their desk drawer trying to explain to students at office hours that beat reporting wasn't a soapbox for their inner profundity. And that they, like, you know, had <500 words to get it right so how can you even describe what happened and still have room for the opinion. None of those over-entitled dickwads were even paying attention because CNN was blaring on the TV's in the hallway.

And then Drudge happened. And suddenly a comfortable living was pasting headlines on top of URL's.

This was 2-3 years before blogs were really around in recognizable or workable form. And before search engines were reliable (hello, WebCrawler and AltaVista). I enjoyed learning from the old pros teaching (some) of the courses, but I died a little more inside every day I was around my classmates. And around a couple of profs who were profiteering off the circus in their day jobs. The classmates who actually "got" it almost never ended up going into the field because they couldn't hold down 2 waitress jobs and an apartment while 'paying their dues' as a stringer for a neighborhood weekly at child slave labor wages. While the bloggers-to-be fucknuts were all trust fund sons and daughters of editors at major newspapers and magazines who already had the nepotism internship waiting for them so fuck it why hone the craft. I never went more than half-into it and eventually stacked the deck more to my sociology degree than J degree, because I could tell what dereliction of duty I would've been surrounding myself with by thinking I could ever go to work with these people.


The boomer-generation media is bad enough. With very, very few exceptions of those destitute in it for the right reasons who couldn't even put a roof over their heads 10 years ago but still managed to scrape on enough in an incredible imploding industry to carve out some reputation for themselves...every byline and magic-talking-ass age 34 and younger that you see are the ones I just described who grew up thinking punditry was a reporter's birthright. And my classmates weren't even part of the main-sequence Gen Y...those clowns were enrolling just as I was leaving. So you know how the standards have fallen since.


Actually, only guy I went to school with at BU who I think has carved out a nice journalistic space for himself and done it for the right reasons is Fluto Shizawa of the Boston Globe, the youngin who edged aside 'Shaughnessy-on-skates' Kevin Paul Dupont (god, I wanted to climb over the desks and punch that colostomy bag when he guest-lectured my sports reporting class) as the main Bruins beat guy. Shizawa used to cover the BU hockey team for the school's indie paper when I was there. Such an infectiously enthusiastic rink geek he could do this for 50 years and never lose the "holy crap, I get to do this for a living!" wonderment. He reads the same and as prolifically as he did before, just with more polished writing and experience. That's it...he's the only one who got made by playing it straight. Rest of them--and a couple of them did latch on places--it was with insider connections or nepotism boosting a singular career goal to get into the infotainment business to regale the world in their very-important-indeed opinions.

Spiff
User avatar
Mostly Nekkid
Posts: 4385
Joined: 16 Jun 2008, 11:23am
Location: In the Spiff Bunker

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Spiff »

Dr. Medulla wrote:Spiff, can you comment on the importance of the trenchcoat for getting the story right?
Why, I don't know what you're talking about. :shifty:
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

-- There's no fairytale ending with cocaine.

Wolter
User avatar
Half Foghorn Leghorn, Half Albert Brooks
Posts: 55432
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 7:59pm
Location: ¡HOLIDAY RO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-OAD!

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Wolter »

Spiff wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:Spiff, can you comment on the importance of the trenchcoat for getting the story right?
Why, I don't know what you're talking about. :shifty:
How close does your Walter Winchell impression have to be to the original to get a byline in a city paper?
”INDER LOCK THE THE KISS THREAD IVE REALISED IM A PRZE IDOOT” - Thomas Jefferson

"But the gorilla thinks otherwise!"

Spiff
User avatar
Mostly Nekkid
Posts: 4385
Joined: 16 Jun 2008, 11:23am
Location: In the Spiff Bunker

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Spiff »

Wolter wrote:
Spiff wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:Spiff, can you comment on the importance of the trenchcoat for getting the story right?
Why, I don't know what you're talking about. :shifty:
How close does your Walter Winchell impression have to be to the original to get a byline in a city paper?
Mine wasn't good enough, apparently, because although I worked at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I never got a byline (I was copy desk).
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

-- There's no fairytale ending with cocaine.

Flex
User avatar
Mechano-Man of the Future
Posts: 35802
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 2:50pm
Location: The Information Superhighway!

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Flex »

Spiff wrote:
Wolter wrote:
Spiff wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:Spiff, can you comment on the importance of the trenchcoat for getting the story right?
Why, I don't know what you're talking about. :shifty:
How close does your Walter Winchell impression have to be to the original to get a byline in a city paper?
Mine wasn't good enough, apparently, because although I worked at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I never got a byline (I was copy desk).
Seems like a clearcut case of discrimation against naked folk to me.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

JennyB
User avatar
Mossad Van Driver
Posts: 22257
Joined: 16 Jun 2008, 1:13pm
Location: Moranjortsville

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by JennyB »

Spiff was Deep Throat.

Also, I wish Patrick Kennedy would run for re-election.
Got a Rake? Sure!

IMCT: Inane Middle-Class Twats - Dr. M

" *sigh* it's right when they throw the penis pump out the window." -Hoy

Flex
User avatar
Mechano-Man of the Future
Posts: 35802
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 2:50pm
Location: The Information Superhighway!

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Flex »

Well, the fourth estate is beyond useless: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/20 ... ite_house/
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Dr. Medulla
User avatar
Atheistic Epileptic
Posts: 115992
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 2:00pm
Location: Straight Banana, Idaho

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Flex wrote:Well, the fourth estate is beyond useless: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/20 ... ite_house/
Way beyond useless. If you want to be in the WHPC, you should have to sign a non-publishing agreement.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Flex
User avatar
Mechano-Man of the Future
Posts: 35802
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 2:50pm
Location: The Information Superhighway!

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Flex »

I have a hard time fathoming how I ever had any respect for Thomas Friedman at all. This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read (well, not really, but one of the dumbest things today): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/opini ... edman.html
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Dr. Medulla
User avatar
Atheistic Epileptic
Posts: 115992
Joined: 15 Jun 2008, 2:00pm
Location: Straight Banana, Idaho

Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Flex wrote:I have a hard time fathoming how I ever had any respect for Thomas Friedman at all. This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read (well, not really, but one of the dumbest things today): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/opini ... edman.html
And he makes a shit-ton of money for being a credible moron. :disshame:
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Post Reply