The Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear
Oct. 31st, 2010 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7Last night I said the following: 'Tomorrow, we'll watch as pundits turn "Let's Have A Reasoned Discourse About Our Disagreements" into partisan bullshit. Night.' And, this morning, I find that I was wrong about that. What I have found, instead, is pudits resonding to an impassioned plea to provide people with trenchant, reasonable analysis based on fact and lightly tinged with our differences of opinion with "Don't Blame Us! We're Only Giving The People What They Want," and "Well, when they say 'conflict-driven' they obviously don't mean me."
This morning, on reliable sources, Howie Kurtz presented a False Dichotomy about the content of the crowd at the "Rally To Restore Sanity..." ('They're either passionate about moderation, or they're just fans of Stewart and Colbert'), just before replaying a clip of Jon Stewart highlighting a False Dichotomy ("There are, of course, only two ways to view what happened here, today..."). This was done without any trace of irony, or self-awareness.
He then went on to interview two people, one of whom was the Washington Post's Paul Farhi, who said, on air, that the 24-hour cable news networks care more about ratings than about truth and reasoned analysis. He went so far as to say that, if people want even-handed coverage they can turn to C-Span. C-Span is a camera in a room, and it is not equipped to analyse and dissect, and compare, and call politicians on their bullshit, Paul. Also, it seems as if you don't recognise that A) if you provide people with detailed trenchant analysis on a 24-hour cycle in an in-depth, intelligent, non-combative, civil manner, more people will watch your show. See those people on The Mall, yesterday? They'll read your newspaper-- I mean "Watch Your Show," if you give them something intelligent to watch. Something that's not spin and "Oh well, the people love blood in the water."
Which brings me to point B: Paul? Arianna? Jon was talking about you, too. Don't think that just because you're liberal, or just because you work for a newspaper, you're not part of perpetuating the culture of demonising contentiousness that was spoken out against, in force, yesterday.
Hell, all you have to do is Read The Transcript of Jon's Speech, to see if that doesn't simply make sense, as a news model, and then look at the number of people who agree with what he had to say-- on the Mall, across the country, and around the world via Internet-- to see if that doesn't make sense as a Business model.
Sent this as an e-mail. So damn annoying when people miss the point, entierly.
Work, now
This morning, on reliable sources, Howie Kurtz presented a False Dichotomy about the content of the crowd at the "Rally To Restore Sanity..." ('They're either passionate about moderation, or they're just fans of Stewart and Colbert'), just before replaying a clip of Jon Stewart highlighting a False Dichotomy ("There are, of course, only two ways to view what happened here, today..."). This was done without any trace of irony, or self-awareness.
He then went on to interview two people, one of whom was the Washington Post's Paul Farhi, who said, on air, that the 24-hour cable news networks care more about ratings than about truth and reasoned analysis. He went so far as to say that, if people want even-handed coverage they can turn to C-Span. C-Span is a camera in a room, and it is not equipped to analyse and dissect, and compare, and call politicians on their bullshit, Paul. Also, it seems as if you don't recognise that A) if you provide people with detailed trenchant analysis on a 24-hour cycle in an in-depth, intelligent, non-combative, civil manner, more people will watch your show. See those people on The Mall, yesterday? They'll read your newspaper-- I mean "Watch Your Show," if you give them something intelligent to watch. Something that's not spin and "Oh well, the people love blood in the water."
Which brings me to point B: Paul? Arianna? Jon was talking about you, too. Don't think that just because you're liberal, or just because you work for a newspaper, you're not part of perpetuating the culture of demonising contentiousness that was spoken out against, in force, yesterday.
Hell, all you have to do is Read The Transcript of Jon's Speech, to see if that doesn't simply make sense, as a news model, and then look at the number of people who agree with what he had to say-- on the Mall, across the country, and around the world via Internet-- to see if that doesn't make sense as a Business model.
Sent this as an e-mail. So damn annoying when people miss the point, entierly.
Work, now
