Yet another excellent indictment of the GHOULISH dereliction-of-duty "Mainstream Media" and TV news.....
The fact that the Mainstream Media - the corporate media that dominates the large newspapers and cable- and network news - is ENTIREL UNAPOLOGETIC about their "JohBenet-Karr" feeding frenzy feasting-on-corpse story, is indicative of two things: #1. how completely DIVORCED the media whores are from any concept of duty or responsibility or the need to keep American citizens INFORMED about more important issues;
and,
#2.) how MAKING MONEY and surrounding oneself with the trappings of success - deferential staff, helpers, production managers and assistants - becomes the reward in and of itself. How WORSHIPPING THE GOLDEN CALF of MAMON *is* the new American religion.
That is, America's major media anchors are interested ONLY in viewers and profits - the content of their newscasts is important only in its ability to glue viewers to their TV screens. Even when they are shown to have spent hours and DAYS covering a bogus story, as long as they have sold commercials and air-time, they are smug and self-satisfied.
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And we here at MediaWhoresUSA.blogspot.com APOLOGIZE to the "working ladies of the evening" (as, for example, Jamie Lee Curtis portraying 'the working gal' who saves Dan Akroyd's character on a bet in the Dan Akroyd - Eddie Murphy movie "Trading Places"). For these women perform a valuable service to society (just imagine a military base, ANYWHERE in the world, that didn't have 'working ladies' in close proximity), and many, as the character portrayed by Jamie Lee, work long and hard to pay their bills, save a little money, or even raise their children.
Unlike our paid professional Media Whore liars, who get paid huge salaries to pimp, primp, and blather on the little screen or (like Judy Miller of the nyt) in the pages of the nation's 'news' papers.
Jeff Cohen: Sick Puppy Meets Media Beast
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 08/29/2006 - 9:49am. Guest Contribution
by Jeff Cohen
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/383
John Mark Karr is one sick puppy –- a school teacher who fantasized that he’d engaged in consensual sex so passionately with six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey that he accidentally killed her.
And television news in our country is one ravenous beast -– abandoning any notion of journalism, proportion or decency to again prey upon JonBenet’s corpse for ratings and profit.
God only knows what combination of hurt and mental illness went into producing the sick puppy. On the other hand, there’s no mystery about what created the media beast: corrupt government policies combined with corporate greed.
Make no mistake: The media beast is every bit as compulsive and out of control as Karr, who may yet end up behind bars for child pornography. But the beast is free to maul again and again.
For 10 days, TV news has fixated on this imposter-culprit as if he were a world-historical figure –- like Nelson Mandela emerging from prison, only bigger. TV tracked Karr’s travels across the globe, telling us what he ate for dinner, analyzing his attire.
To extend Karr’s allotted 15-minutes of fame into a 10-day ordeal, TV news ignored important stories of war, environmental degradation, corruption, citizen activism. Instead, TV viewers were offered hundreds of hours of single-minded examination and debate on one burning question: did Karr do it? The inquiry was relentless and aired all sides.
If only we’d had such in-depth, full-spectrum debate when the Bush team was dragging our country into war based on pretense.
I worked in cable news just prior to the Iraq war. As I describe in my book Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, journalists at MSNBC got into trouble with management for questioning Team Bush too strongly, for insisting on genuine debate.
By contrast, no one will get into trouble for this embarrassing 10-day spasm of overwrought Karr coverage. . .as long as ratings were good and coverage was cheap. If so, news producers can expect congratulations for a job well done.
Tabloid stories involving sex, crime or celebrity are preferred by TV news management today. These stories are inexpensive to cover, since speculation by alleged experts can fill fill up hours of airtime. And tabloid stories typically don’t offend anyone in political or economic power, including corporate sponsors and media owners.
But aggressively covering an administration bent on war can cause all sorts of problems. Especially for a media conglomerate that has business pending before the Federal Communications Commission. Especially when that media titan is lobbying the FCC to allow it to grow even more titanic –- as was happening in 2003 exactly at the time the Bush White House was launching its invasion of Iraq.
During the run-up to war, I was a senior producer on Phil Donahue’s primetime MSNBC show, the most watched program on the channel, until it was terminated three weeks before the war began. An internal NBC memo soon leaked out, complaining that Donahue was "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. . .He seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives."
Stick to tabloid stories and your TV career will flourish. Be skeptical about officialdom’s war motives and they’ll show you the door.
I’ll never forget my first day of work at MSNBC headquarters in the spring of 2002. As I entered the building's central corridor, I saw a number of framed posters celebrating highpoints of the channel's early history. The first one: "The Funeral of Princess Diana." Then: "Death of JFK, Jr." On the opposite wall, I saw "Columbine Shootings, Live Coverage" and "The Concorde Crash."
I remember thinking: If these are what MSNBC considers its highlights, what were its lowlights?
TV news owners and management love stories that keep viewers passive, on the sidelines -- as spectators. They fear the ones that might motivate us to take action, on the field -- as citizens.
Active, informed citizens seek out (and build) independent media. They’re the kind of pesky activists who intervene in FCC decisions and fight to diversify a mainstream media system that's been surrendered corruptly to a half-dozen conglomerates.
TV news is trying desperately to hold onto its audience of passive consumers: those who know everything about John Mark Karr's dinner of pate and chardonnay, and next to nothing about the court ruling that Bush's warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional.
Last night, with cable news anchors looking ridiculous over their 10-day JonBenet binge, one MSNBC host seemed to need a scapegoat. If not murder, she asked a legal expert, couldn’t Karr at least be charged with "conspiracy to set off a media frenzy"?
You see, the 10-day hijacking of the airwaves was not her fault, or her bosses' fault. It was Karr's fault. . .TV's version of "the sick puppy ate my homework" excuse.
Buzzflash Guest Contributor
Jeff Cohen is the founder of the media watch group FAIR, and author of the new book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.
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