Hit It!

Well, since we are reduced to flinging videos at at one another, here’s the latest. It’s Hillary’s lame attempt to be part of it all. It wouldn’t be so funny if they weren’t trying to be serious.

On the other side of the coin, I was working yesterday, doing some dull, repetitive stuff, so I went looking for some background noise. What I found was this – a news broadcast from Democracy Now! As I was listening to it, it slowly dawned … I was listening to a real discussion of candidates and their stances. No glitz, no videos, no horse race – just a serious dissection of where Clinton and Obama stand on health care reform.

Democracy Now! is often the object of condescension, as it is a lefty network, but it also does something all of the mainstreams forgot how to do – journalism. I have watched a lot of CNN lately – it’s all horse race. DN! doesn’t fear boring its viewership, I suppose. They are not worried they will bail and head over to FOX. And truthfully, they do run some pretty frightful stuff. Code Pink is often featured.

But they also try hard to give good and hard coverage of current events. And they do other stuff – who else would ask John Edwards’s campaign manager to go on opposite Ralph Nader? Or ask him about Edwards’ conservative voting record or his stint with a hedge fund after his election loss in 2004? Who would cover Noam Chomsky’s latest speech (Mr. PNG -persona non grata)? Or East Timor, about to blow up again? Or labor news, long absent from mainstream and local coverage?

No one else. If I watched nothing but Democracy Now!, I would be better informed than if I watched only CNN, NBC, ABC, FOX, or certainly if I only read the local paper.

Now, back to Hillary’s video. Let’s rock and roll with the C-Woman. (Be sure to take note of the sax player – a Bill-clone? Good grief.)

11 thoughts on “Hit It!”

  5. Unless one considers magazines and papers, outside of their editorial pages, that collectively can help one understand policy. Let’s just name a few:

    The Nation
    The Village Voice
    Reason Mag
    The Wall Street Journal
    The Financial Time
    The Economist
    The Christian Science Monitor
    The Washington Post
    National Review
    The National Journal
    Washington Weekly
    The New Republic

    Yeah, the market does a shitty job.

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  7. If Americans demanded better coverage they would get it. The reality is that “most people” aren’t interested enough in the arcane details of policy to want anything more. TV is just responding to the market. The problem is in the consumer’s interest in policy – not in the market’s ability to deliver it.

    You can lead a horse to water and all that rot.

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  8. I agree. TV merely mis-serves the public by appealing to the LCD. It dumbs us all down. It’s chicken and egg – we are capable of more and better. It is interesting that the best news on TV and radio comes from government subsidized channels. What’s up with that?

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  9. Your idea of “the best news” seems pretty subjective to me. Secondly, NBP subsidizes only about 10% of NPR and PBS. Most of the funding for “public” media comes from corporations, foundations, and individual gifts. So maybe the message you hear resonates with you because of the “market” (and the agendas) which makes it possible.

    The only way to get an objective understanding of the news is to get all sides of it. That’s why I read The Nation as well as the National Review.

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  10. Pingback: Say Anything « Piece Of Mind

  11. PBS and CBS self-censor to the exact degree they depend on corporate financing. That was, like, the whole point of cutting back the subsidy. To get them to join the others. They are the best of the lot, but they ain’t that great.

    But the fact that they are not running ads all day works in their favor.

    What if The Nation and National Review both suck? I was a 20 year subscriber to NR and 10 years to the Nation. But I’m happy now with an exclectic mix – Business Week, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and WSJ. I’m still waiting for Murdoch to ruin the journal.

    And one can objectively look at mainstream news, and judge that apart from the occasional missing white girl, they don’t do it so well.

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