Network News vs. the Daily Show

Yesterday I watched Eyewitness News at 6:00 on ABC, and then the Daily Show at 11:00 on Comedy Central so that I could compare how both programs covered the same news stories. On this particular day there were two key top stories that each show discussed, both of which I have already talked about in previous posts. These were the hysteria over the outbreak of the Swine Flu and the botched photo-op that resulted in an Air-Force One look-alike flying over Lower Manhattan and terrifying its people. I thought that both programs did an excellent job of covering all of the key points from each story, although there were some key differences in the way each presented the material. The most obvious difference between these two programs is that the Daily Show not only gives a general overview of each story, but it also adds a comedic touch to it as seen here:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Mistakes on a Plane
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Besides this, the other main difference between the shows is that while the Daily Show generally picks two or three main stories and spends the entire show talking about them, Eyewitness News starts the program with the major issues and then continues on with a bunch of minor stories (usually upsetting things such as murder or other crimes). Overall, I would say that both programs do about an equal job on informing the viewer about the major stories of the day. However, Eyewitness News does a much better job of informing the viewer on the smaller, more local stories. All things considered though, I would not recommend either as a primary source of news. Simply put, too much happens every day for everything to be condensed into a half an hour show (fifteen minutes in the case of the Daily Show if you account for the daily interview). Although either of these options is a good way to get a quick burst of information, they should only be treated as news supplements. I would encourage people to look elsewhere such as an online newspaper or a 24-hour news network for their main diet of daily news.

Fox News and CNN: Both Equally Terrifying

When I first heard about the outbreak of the “Swine Flu,” I have to say that I did not think anything of it, but after seeing a few headlines here and there about it I said to myself, “Hey, I have to do this blog post where I compare how Fox News and CNN cover the same news story.” This seemed like a big enough story, so I turned on the television to see what all the hubbub was about. Over the next hour or so, I was convinced by both Fox and CNN that the cold that I had was some sort of mutant pathogen that was going to kill me and half of the world’s population. Thanks guys, I was looking for something else to stress out about.

Although this probably was not the best news story to look at for this situation, I did not really see any political bias one way or the other on either network. The only noticeable difference was that CNN had a lot more references to Obama’s upcoming 100th day in office. All things considered though, I’m going to go ahead and assume that if I had watched these networks on some other day, there might have been a little more bias present. I guess a pandemic is not really something that you can put a political spin on (even though I’m sure those sneaky Democrats have something to do with it).

Luckily for me, I was able to use this handy thing called the internet to do a little research of my own about the disease that supposedly is going to kill us all. Everything that I read pointed to the fact that the Swine Flu is basically no more dangerous than a regular flu. All the symptoms are the same, and it can be easily treated just by using antibiotics. As I am writing this, there have been around 150 deaths from this “outbreak” thus far. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there are approximately 36,000 deaths from flu every year in just the United States. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this does not sound like a reason to start preparing for the apocalypse. All I can say for sure is that liberal or conservative, the one thing that news networks can agree on is that they love scaring the living hell out of people.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Always makes my day when Jon Stewart agrees with me

Flyover Causes a Panic in New York City

This morning between 10:00 and 10:30 A.M. an Air Force One lookalike accompanied by two F-16 fighter jets made a flyover of Lower Manhattan. Although this was a scheduled exercise so that the Air Force could take pictures, the lack of public awareness regarding the situation resulted in the mass evacuations of several buildings throughout Manhattan and Jersey City. With the recent attacks of September 11th still extremely fresh in their minds, people wasted no time in leaving the buildings as soon as they saw the plane over the city. Within minutes, 911 operators were flooded with calls from concerned citizens, and even the markets seem to have been effected with the Dow Jones dropping 40 points during the flyover before rebounding 50 points after it became apparent that all was well. Although the New York City and New Jersey State police forces were notified about the flyover, they were given strict instructions not to inform the public. Additionally, Notify NYC, a system designed to send out text messages to New Yorkers in case of an emergency situation, sent out messages explaining the circumstances at 10:38, which was after the flyover was already completed.

The complete failure of officials to even attempt to notify the public of this situation is absolutely unacceptable. For a city that has been attacked so recently, it is completely ridiculous to think that an unannounced flyover of Lower Manhattan would not be met by a panic. The lack of coordination led to a complete shutdown of several buildings for almost half an hour, and put an unnecessary strain on police and 911 operators, who could have been using the time to deal with actual problems. Worst of all, following today, people may be much more reluctant to evacuate in case of a real threat. It would have been extremely simple to send out a memo or even an e-mail to office buildings and have them announce the message over their PA systems before the flyover was scheduled to commence, but for whatever reason no efforts were made until after the panic had already begun.

Despite the gross negligence of officials, I applaud the individual citizens and businesses who recognized a potential threat and took it upon themselves to extricate themselves from harm. Perhaps if people had this mindset back on September 11th, the loss of life would have been lessened dramatically.

Obama's Weekly Address

Since taking office back in January, President Barack Obama has issued a weekly address to the nation every Saturday on the internet. Each address is around five minutes long, and they consist of Obama explaining an issue that his administration is currently focused on. I watched the April 25th address, which dealt with the Obama Administration’s quest to decrease government spending and to try and put a dent in the massive budget deficit in the U.S. government.

A president addressing the nation on a weekly basis like this is something that is unprecedented in the history of the United States. Granted, a huge part of that is the fact that modern technology has made it infinitely easier for someone to talk to the entire country no matter where in the world he might be. Still, Obama seems to be much more eager to talk to the country then previous presidents, especially his direct predecessor George W. Bush. Used properly, I think that this kind of thing can be a great tool for educating the general population about what the current administration is actually doing to solve this country’s problems.

Unfortunately from what I have seen so far, these weekly addresses have generally been less about actually informing the public and more about giving the illusion of informing the public. This particular address was four and a half minutes long, and about three minutes of it was Obama basically just repeating in different ways that the government needs to start using money more responsibly. The only semi-useful part of the address was a short list of generic steps that Obama and his administration plan to take:

1. Adhere to the basic principle that new tax or entitlement policies should be paid for.
2. Create new incentives to eliminate wasteful spending and promote what works
3. Look for ideas from the bottom up. (Talk to low-level workers, not just management)
4. Reach beyond the halls of government. (Ask businesses for help)

These steps are all extremely vague, and do not give the slightest bit of insight as to the specific things that the Obama administration may or may not be doing to eliminate our country’s massive debt. If Obama really wants to give these addresses, and personally I do not think they are necessary at all, he should at least come to the table with something useful to say, and not just say things like “wasteful spending is bad.” I suspect that all these addresses are just a way for Obama to keep his face in the public view for when re-election time comes along, but that’s another story entirely…

Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck is an Academy Award nominated film released in 2005 that centers around the standoff between journalist Edward R. Murrow and United States Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s. The film was written and directed by George Clooney, and it stars David Strathairn as Murrow, Clooney as Fred Friendly (co-producer of Murrow’s show), and Robert Downey Jr. as Joseph Wershba (a correspondent for CBS News). The movie begins and ends with a speech given by Murrow warning his audience not to let the potential of television to inform and educate the public go to waste, and the bulk of the film chronicles the day to day operations of the See It Now program. This program dealt with a variety of controversial issues during its run in the 1950s, but it was most famous for its criticism of McCarthyism during the Red Scare.

The main plot of Good Night, and Good Luck begins with Murrow defending a lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve named Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the service because he maintained close ties with his father and sister who were supposedly communist sympathizers. By bringing the ridiculousness of this case to the public on his program, Murrow invoked the wrath of McCarthy, who quickly came out and accused Murrow himself of sympathizing with communists. Even though this was at a time when such an accusation often met the immediate end to someone’s career, Murrow refused to fold. He quickly responded to McCarthy by denying the charges and then launching a counterattack, saying that the real danger to America was the Communist witch hunt and not the danger of Communist infiltration. After a series of back and forths between Murrow and McCarthy, Murrow and the See It Now team finally managed to convince enough people that McCarthy was the source of the problem, and this ultimately resulted in a Senate investigation of the senator. Unfortunately for Murrow, despite this success his show was moved to an unfavorable time slot and ultimately canceled due to its lack of ratings and the popularity of the new quiz show genre.

I feel that this film was very well written and put together, and from what I have read it is very historically accurate with only minor liberties taken for dramatic effect. The use of black and white film add to the historical feel of the movie, and the use of actual stock footage of Senator Joseph McCarthy give it an added realism. In addition, many of the film’s major themes are still extremely relevant today. Most prevalently, the struggle of Edward Murrow to remain on the air despite doing a great public service is something that can easily be related to in the present day. Networks are very reluctant to show programs similar to See It Now because they know that they can get much better ratings by showing mindless reality shows or other non-informational programs. Unfortunately, this seems to be an inescapable part of the American media, and we will just have to hope that journalists like Murrow keep coming around to show us that the media can be used to inform and educate just as easily as it can be used to entertain.

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post is a massive blog and news website that was founded in May 2005 by Ariana Huffington and Kenneth Lerer. In addition to posting news stories, the Post offers a social commentary from a liberal perspective. The articles and blog entries throughout the site are written by a variety of different authors, all with a relatively similar position on the political spectrum. The front page includes all of the top stories and popular articles from that day, and from there the site is organized by several categories including politics, media, business, and entertainment. Clicking on one of these categories will give the reader an array of articles on that particular subject.

Although it obviously should not be taken as a reliable news source, The Huffington Post is what it is, and it serves its purpose well. Though I personally would not consider myself liberal by any means, the writing throughout the site is good enough that one can enjoy reading it without agreeing with what is being said. The site is also extremely organized, allowing readers to quickly find blog entries on any subject that they want. All and all, the Huffington Post is one of the better blogs that I’ve come across, and though I probably will not make a habit of visiting it, I would certainly recommend it to people that are looking for liberal social commentary on world events.

RE: Nuclear Advice

Milan Vodicka, a Czech national living in Prague, was present at a speech given by President Barack Obama during his tour of Europe earlier this month. Amongst all the things said by the president, the one item that stuck out the most to Vodicka was his call for the complete eradication of all nuclear weapons in the entire world. In his article, Nuclear Advice, Vodicka points out all of the flaws with this particular proposal. For starters, these weapons are the only things keeping countries such as Great Britain, France, and Russia from losing their status as world powers, thus making it virtually impossible to get them to go along with Obama’s proposal. In addition, supposing that by some miracle all nations agreed to dismantle their weapons, all it would take is a single rouge state or organization or even a group of rouge scientists to plunge the world into chaos if they managed to acquire a nuke. All in all, despite living in the Czech Republic, a country with no nuclear weapons, Vodicka feels much safer in a world where many countries have nuclear weapon capability than he would if all nations decided to completely eliminate their nuke supplies

I agree strongly with Vodicka on this matter, and find it very hard to comprehend those who think the elimination of nukes is a plausible idea, including Mr. Obama. Without a doubt there is a strong danger stemming from the absurd amount of nuclear weapons in existence, and I have absolutely no problem with countries working together to reduce their stockpiles because lets face it, there really isn’t any good reason for countries to have enough weapons to destroy the entire world more than a thousand times (barring an alien invasion or something). However, to suggest that nations get rid of all of their nuclear weapons is just ignorant and naïve. Even in the extremely unlikely case that every single nuke in the world is eliminated, what would prevent them from being built again sometime down the road? Just because we get rid of the weapons won’t mean we’ll have forgotten how to make them, and if one country decides sometime that they don’t feel like cooperating anymore, then they could build a few nukes and assert themselves as the world’s leading power.

For the sake of argument, lets go one step further and say that by some act of God, no one builds a nuclear weapon ever again. I would still say that the world is better off and safer with a good balance of nuclear powers. The existence of nuclear weapons is the single greatest deterrent against war that the world has ever seen, as well as the greatest contributing factor of the general stability the world has seen since World War II. During the years of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were bitter enemies and during any other period in human history, they very likely would have went to war with each other over something eventually. Both sides were terrified of conflict with the other due to the fear of nuclear escalation, and thus World War III was prevented. Vodicka brings up a perfect example of nukes as a deterrent and a stabilizer when he mentions the situation in Israel. Israel's nuclear weapons are, and have always been, the only thing preventing the slew of neighboring Islamic states from overrunning and conquering them. I strongly believe the elimination of nukes would be a grave mistake on any level, and it was refreshing to read an article by a citizen of a non-nuclear power who agrees with me.