You gotta see this
March 6th, 2009 | EdWords | 4 Comments
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No cartoon today, but if you haven’t seen it already, check out the funniest and best takedown of CNBC’s business coverage leading up to the economic meltdown. Jon Stewart simply nails the network for its Pollyanna view of the economic climate and its lightweight handling of the bloodsucker CEOs who destroyed the economy. If only newspapers had the guts to operate like this, maybe we’d all be reading them instead of getting our news from Comedy Central.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220252&title=cnbc-gives-financial-advice
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Well, that’s the power of “Pictures or it didn’t happen”. Finally somebody did the work and the CNBC people looked like total morons. Although hacking into another channel is not really doable for someone other than Jon because they don’t have the credibility, the news organizations in the US don’t either when it comes to topics where they could. Or it’s just blowhards without the actual proof or science or very small programs like PBS Frontline and such. I wish news organizations spent more time working stuff out like that, instead of helicoptering after cars where there is nothing to see. Like a good overview of the budget for example (http://www.wallstats.com/poster/) or of what was promised vs what was delivered by politicians. Don’t give me pundits, give me the people doing the research like with TED.com. In the end it’s just ridiculous that your news had to copy the “Election Compass”-concept from us, the Dutch, a country one twentieth the size of the US. So I’m totally not surprised that, when most of the stories come directly from the AP anyway, people get that info real-time from the internet. The end of that would probably be something like CNET.com where they get the news and then in-house process it to print, podcasts and video. I just hope that after that slimming, people will see business plans to make the better news I crave.
Since Stewart and Colbert film during the day, why can’t those guys just run a nightly news show that’s timed to air against those tragic network news shows?
Thinking back to the Tucker Carlson incident I don’t they should, because then they would have to do all the stuff stat is necessary to be a reputable news source and I don’t think they want that job. I think they’re fine where they are now, mocking the process and pointing out it’s flaws. The only pity is that, although they are in a great spot to find problems, on a lot of subjects they don’t have the power to bring improvements. You get to vote every 4 years and then may or may not get some improvement on the political field, but something like the ridiculous stuff CNBC pulled won’t be cleaned up and will probably exist permanently because there are always douchebags trying to profit over other peoples backs. I hope something like Obama’s Organizing for America would improve that somewhat but I’m guessing they will stay away from a large amount of subjects, as they are viewed in a left/right instead of forward/backwards way.
As for actual news I think that in the next few year we might see people expanding the http://www.politicallunch.com concept and expanding it to a proper online evening news show. With better production value like Tekzilla, a revision3.com show.
It is nice to see your work after the collapse of the Rocky Mountain News. I remember reading your first cartoons in that paper back when I was going to high school over at Denver East. You, like the rest of that paper was an old friend.
I agree that if the press was not quite the lap dogs that they have been as of late, perhaps newspapers like the RMN would not have folded. The San Francisco Chronicle is also on the ropes as well and it may meet the same fate as the RMN. As for why they became lapdogs is probably due to the restrictions lifted by the Telecommunications Act of 1997, which allowed the same company to own several newspapers, TV stations and radio stations in a single market. As a result, there are fewer competitors out there vying or one’s attention. Add to that the pervasive nature of the internet and its business models, which can provide advertising for much less than any newspaper can and that pretty much undermines the income for a paper. So between corporate ownership that can organize their media outlets to maximize profit, and the free classified ads being posted on the Internet, the old business model by which Newspapers thrived failed.
Unfortunately, with the loss of the daily newspapers, we may lose one of our primary sources for in-depth coverage and research of news events. The internet by its nature can not make up for this loss since it can allow all connected to present their view and as a result, we may never get at the truth like we did in the past. We need these avenues of opinion and truth. Between the two of them, we get our perspective and determine what we need to do next.
I hope that when the domain names are up for sale for the Rocky Mountain News, whoever purchases them will use them with good intentions and possibly bring forth an objective view of the news from that part of the world and not to put forth their agenda.
Michael D. Goolsby
Livermore, California