Michael Jackson’s Death: A Media-Driven National Disaster

The hysterical, unrelenting media coverage of Jackson crowded out almost all news reports of the Iranian massacres, of the terrible Congressional carbon-tax bill (which might not have passed the House or even been brought to a vote had it received more public attention), of North Korea and of who-knows-what other important issues at the end of the past week. Our corrupt, agenda-driven political leaders, not to mention this country’s enemies, are no doubt taking full advantage of the windfall.

The people who wallow in Jackson’s death are foolish and self-indulgent and lack grown-up perspective. Even worse are the mass-media who cater to the wallowers. Since most of the media are already covering Jackson one might think an enterprising network would see competitive advantage in covering, for at least part of the day, some of the important things that are going on in the world. But no, they are lemmings, and the result is 24/7 Jackson. (And here let me send a special fuck you to Fox News. The self-proclaimed antidote to biased big media confirms itself to be just another bunch of ratings whores whose supposed patriotism and interest in serious news vanish at the first notice of a missing white child or a celebrity scandal.)

Political bias is a big cause of the decline of the legacy media, but the inherent weaknesses of advertising-driven broadcasting shouldn’t be discounted. Broadcasters make money by generating traffic, which means they try to generate as much traffic as possible, typically by emphasizing the tawdry and the salacious and by ginning up controversy. On the Internet this is known as trolling and is derided. In the broadcast world this is known as the dominant business model. Our media status quo is better than having a government-controlled press (Fox is still superior to NPR), and the Internet now provides important alternative sources of information. Nevertheless, our broadcast media’s insane focus on Jackson’s death is an infuriating reminder of how much those media’s limitations may be costing us in the long run as a society.

Michael Jackson Has Died…

… and the world just got a little less creepy.

[update (2009-6-25-09:50): My spouse says I was overly snarky so here’s a more  nuanced  view of Jackson from an old post from June 2005.]

ABC “Only” 2/3 Biased So Far

I haven’t watched the ABC Primetime special yet but I did read ABC’s Web summary and I find it less biased than I feared.  

Because of the way human memory and cognition work, the most important parts of any text news story are the headline, the first paragraph and the last paragraph. Indeed one of the cannons of print journalism is that you can  summarize  a story with just these three parts.  

So let’s try that with this story:

President Obama Defends Right to Choose Best Care  
 
President Obama struggled to explain today whether his  health care reform  proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face.
 
“If the American people get behind this, this is going to happen,” the president said.

The headline is positive towards Obama. It says that Obama “defends the right to choose” which is obviously a positive statement. A more neutral headline would be something like, “Obama explained his ideas for health care reform.”

The first paragraph is negative in saying that Obama “struggled” and pointing out that he is a rich and powerful person who will never have to rely on the politically-managed health-care that he advocates for other people.  

The last paragraph is  positive  towards Obama because it gives him the final word and does so in a quote.  

So the  summarized  story that people will take away reads, “Obama defended people’s right to choose the best care, but he struggled to explain how that would work. The plan is going to happen.”

I was surprised by the opening paragraph. Given my dim view of ABC’s built-in bias, I can only assume that Obama really did struggle. Even so, ABC spun the story to Obama’s favor.

Show “South Park” in Sunday School!

    From South Park Season 2 Episode 12 “Clubhouse

    Sharon (Stan’s Mom):  [sighs] Stanley, you know you’re the most imprtant thing to me, right?

    Stan:  If that’s true, then get back together with Dad for me!

    Sharon:  Now Stanley, you have to understand how divorce works. When I say, “you’re the most important thing to me,” what I mean is, you’re the most important thing after me and my happiness and my new romances.

    Stan: Oh.

    I think South Park is the most moral show on TV. Even with all the cursing and gross-out humor, I think it should be shown in Sunday School.

Let the FTC Regulate Where It Would Do Some Good

So, the bright bulbs at Obama’s Federal Trade  Commission  have decided to regulate blogs based on the premise that undisclosed financial relationships between bloggers and businesses could lead bloggers to  deceive  their readers as to the value of products they blog about. [h/t Instapundit]

If we’re going to regulate speech based on inducements to bias why stop with mere financial relationships? I think we should require all media sources to reveal all possible sources of  bias  starting with the political affiliations of the publishers and reporters. After all, the media sells stories they advertise as  accurate  and objective. Shouldn’t consumers have ready access to the information they need to decide if those claims are true?

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