Acidus wrote:
] ] (CNN) -- Sinclair Broadcast Group has ordered its seven
] ] ABC stations not to broadcast Friday's "Nightline" that
] ] will air the names and photographs of the more than 500
] ] U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war.
] ]
] ] In a statement online, the Sinclair group said the
] ] "Nightline" program "appears to be motivated by a
] ] political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the
] ] United States in Iraq."
]
] And of course the order to pull the program isn't political
] either.
]
] We have talk about this on Memestreams alot, and this is yet
] another example: Who do you trust for news, when the news is
] filtered by large companies. This is complete and utter
] bullshit [ It sure is. How about this... even (especially!?) if the show is motivated by a political agenda, it should be shown, because that's how people become involved in the political process. For fucks sake, the State of the Union is seldom more than a couple hours of presidential auto-eroticism and we don't censor that... fuck man, this year the president's dick sucking wasn't even that good, talking about steroids and mars and god only knows what the fuck was going thru his brain. I'd argue, of course, that this program isn't a political stunt at all, but an ideological one... too many people have unbelievable trouble separating those two things. Yes, my ideals and moral beliefs inform my political choices, but that doesn't mean they're inextricable or even 1-to-1 (see, for example, John Kerry, who I support politically, but am not ideologically matched with). Obviously ABC likes the idea, at least in part, because it'll be so controversial, and in that sense, I'm somewhat put off by profiting from dead soldiers. However, I think the positive implications outweigh that. Regardless, it's not the company's job to censor political speech, ever. If they had tried to hide behind a "this isn't news, so we're not showing it as news" that'd be bullshit, but somewhat more defensible... I'm not sure if I'm happier that they're outright telling people that they're censoring speech that they believe is political in nature. I guess the MS community is probably mostly on the same page, but this should flatly outrage people of every political leaning, because this sort of censorship is the ideological enemy of free society. Some particularly relevant bits from the article :
* "We find it to be contrary to public interest," [Sinclair general counsel Barry Faber] said. ABC said that on the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks it aired the names and pictures of all those who died on that day. "ABC News will continue to report on all facets of the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism in a manner consistent with the standards which ABC News has set for decades," it said. * Sinclair's statement said ABC is politicizing the war. "Mr. Koppel and 'Nightline' are hiding behind this so-called tribute in an effort to highlight only one aspect of the war effort and in doing so to influence public opinion against the military action in Iraq," the statement said. * According to campaign finance records, four of Sinclair's top executives each have given the maximum campaign contribution of $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.
Of course, I would never accuse an honorable media conglomerate of politicizing their entire enterprise... The news media believes that too many things are contrary to the public interest, because their focus groups can only tell them what people are interested in seeing, not what is in their interest... it's a different thing. I am fundamentally uninterested in machinations of war. They do not appeal to me in the sense of enjoying hearing about or dwelling upon the subject, as I might react to computer programming, or physics. I am not, fundamentally, disinterested in those kinds of details are relevant because they affect my life, wether i like them or not. Someone needs to tell Sinclair's general counsel that the phrase "in the public interest" doesn't refer to what public likes, but events affect that public, and that their company has a journalistic responsibility, if not a moral one, to provide the latter, even if focusing exclusively on the former is more profitable. This is where the disjoint occurs, and it's where the marriage of news and big business breaks down and fails. Acidus asks who we can trust for news, and, as I've argued before, it is the mild paradox of our time that the most trustworthy news sources are often those with the strongest bias... those who make no attempt to hide their political bias or ideological stance, who unabashedly color their stories in the hues of their cause. You can trust them because as much as they skew and distort, they do so honestly, consistently, and without hiding behind a false premise of "journalistic integrity". There are a few still who attempt to tread the middle, being eminiently fair to both sides of a debate, equally debunking myth and misstatement no matter who the speaker may be, but all such people, all such organizations are in danger when enough money becomes involved, and Big Media has more than enough money. I fear the true journalist, the truly objective source, is a dying breed... I, for one, am still caught between my idealism, wishing all reporters could be journalists, and the cynical reality I see day to day, where honesty and completeness is often at odds with the almighty buck. An honest tale may be impossible save in the automated aggregation of multiple sources, the effective averaging of viewpoints, made possible by google news, and RSS, and the forthcoming wave of personal knowledge systems. Perhaps it won't be long before our computers can read the news for us, and posit a single realistic version of a story out of the piles of spin and rhetoric and bias. Maybe that's what we need. -k] RE: CNN.com - 7 ABC affiliates ordered not to air 'Nightline' - Apr 29, 2004 |
