Dear Media, why are you so hesitant to ride without training wheels?

[Stinky The Clown]

Way back, you had Ernie Pyle reporting news, in print, right from the foxholes.

Back in the old days, Walter would report the story. He might play a clip of Dan, in a helmet and flack jacket, standing in a rice paddy and adding to the story, but by and large, the news was Walter's show. The Most Trusted Man In America.

In the heyday of CNN, we knew there were bombers over Baghdad because Peter Arnett, Bernie Shaw and John Holliman were there, live, telling the story as it happened. A then-still-competent pre-swell headed Wolf Blitzer anchored from the safety of the Atlanta Studios.

Now, we get reports of .... oh ..... let's say Sara Palin's reimbursement issues, being reported on by news readers. Rather than tell the whole story like a real, confident news anchor and journalist, they cut to another news reader/internet surfer at some phony news organization like ........ oh ...... Politico. The two newsreaders then sit there and chat by satellite. Friendly greetings and pointless banter occupies more of that air time than does any discussion of the story. In the end, you realize that USAToday would have a more thorough telling of the story than does this supposed 24 hour news channel with nothing but TIME TO FILL.

Instead, they have put the training wheels on their little news cycles. Nothing is done alone.

And stories of actual, meaningful news are relegated to half hourly 'updates' if it is of the airplane crash variety, or a series of verbal wrestling matches if the story is, or can be framed, as political.




Alice ...... how the fuck do we get out of here?

[juno jones]

1. Remind them they're nothing but a pack of cards. n/t