By Ted Becker
This will be a shorty but goody.
Chris Wallace, Mike Wallace’s son but now a Fox “News” commentator, has been on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” several times. Stewart likes him and thinks that Fox has hired him to give the Fox “propaganda” model a veneer of respectability and “balance.” Wallace finally got Stewart to come on his show in late June 2011 to grill him and prove that Stewart, like Fox, has a political agenda. (more…)
By Ted Becker
A few years ago at Auburn University, I asked the Dean of the School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, who had just given a lecture on freedom of the press in Communist China, what he thought of “The Daily Show.” He replied with a question of his own: “Isn’t it sad that the only real news you can get on American television these days is on a comedy show?”
We have coined the phrase “The Jon Stewart Effect” in describing how even “lamestream” (thanks to Sarah Palin for that one) mass media is beginning to cover Sarah Palin in the Jon Stewart style of what he, tongue in cheek, calls “fake news.” Check out a recent blog of ours on that.
So how should a REAL news journalist on TV cover this woman who probably has as much name recognition in American politics as just about anyone other than past and present presidents? Mika Brzezinksi, who is the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” has a history of resisting “puff” stories that have no “REAL” news content. (more…)
by Ted Becker
Photo by Sanfranciscosentinel.com
Is Sarah Palin going to run for the Republican nomination for President? The U.S. mass media is in a frenzy trying to get the American public to care. But why? Everyone knows that she is already doing it. And any serious newsperson knows she’s not anywhere near presidential caliber. Her latest campaign hoax, a political reality show disguised as a “bus tour”, is like a huge pileup of cars on a highway…with passing drivers unable to keep from staring at the bodies. But why do these “professional” newsmen keep staring and daring us to watch it? (more…)
By Ted Becker
Flashy flash! Hillary Clinton has finally said something with which I heartily agree. She told a Congressional committee that the USA is losing “the information war” all over the world. Why? Inadequate American news networks are to blame. She says that Al Jazeera, the independent Arab global cable network actually presents “real news”—without ads and stale, studio formats. Thus, and get this: She has admitted that people in America are tuning them in and the U.S. non-news out.
Hard to believe? OK, see for yourself. Here is part of her statement as presented on—guess where?—Russia Today (RT)…which is also appealing to lots of foreign (and American) YouTube viewers as a credible global news source—or at least as a strong point of view in the global media stew. She’s right because she’s describing a global reality that is gaining momentum in The Information Age. (more…)
Planning for Survival by Ismail Rifaat
