DAMN CNN actually found SOME news today

WOW... they have gotten almost all they can from this turnip

By the way, this modern version of the circus started with the OJ trial... think about it.

even worse than Newton Minnow ever imagined.

as an author of literary fiction, I thank you. Readers are becoming a rare breed, so I'm always grateful when I encounter one - anywhere.

The Vast Wasteland is, yes, so much worse than anything Minow might have envisioned. Even I - and, admittedly, I love my Real Housewives - am left numb by what I see on the schedule.

Like, when did playing poker become a spectator sport? I simply don't understand........................

from their parents and me most of them are readers.

Thank you for being a writer----we all need you.

and quite honestly at times it feels like a losing battle, thank you. We need them too!

they'll be readers all their lives, and you've given them one of the greatest gifts imaginable.

Good for you.

As for my being a writer, I never had a choice. It was write or explode. Writing seemed less messy......................

6 year old grand daughter included, working on the 5 year old.

You ought to be really, really proud. Just the idea that there are kids who get excited about going to a library or a bookstore puts a big smile on this old face.

Thanks a million. You did good.................

I still monitor what passes for "news" but every time I go... Orwell didn't write fiction but prophecy, or best case a how to manual.

The sad part is that the american viewer is a willing participant. All of this is intensely polled to see how much money they get out of the story. See missing blondes. It also speaks volumes to the vacuous entertainment looking Murican

the comment was about the shock the OP felt at the novel idea of CNN doing something other than sensationalistic crap.

But, I may be wrong..............

Loved this thread and comic therein.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5948368&mesg_id=5948368

That is damn funny.

You know, it just occurred to me that you can take a thread like that, and set it to music, and you've got a great first act of a super-wonderful opera.

Of course, somewhere in the second act, a horse must die, but we'll deal with that later............................................

out of this pollsters.

:-)

media induced hysteria... money making proposition.

;-)

I think I will go back to work or damn it, do some ahem readying

really have nothing to do with the issues of the day. They're only about what people will tune to. MJ's passing is obviously something that people will tune to. It's all about ratings.

I know what you mean about the OJ trial, but I think TV has always been like that, hasn't it?

I think the most ironic thing about all of this is that the incident that started MJ on the track of painkillers and surgery probably started when his hair caught fire while he was filming that Pepsi commercial.

People say he destroyed himself. I say, nah, the entertainment industry destroyed him.

the pathology that his father created in that little boy was bound to emerge sooner or later. The hair-on-fire episode was probably just traumatic enough for the floodgates burst - they would have opened eventually, but the trauma and the pain of that accident was enough, perhaps, for Jackson to get on the plastic surgery train and never look back.

I'm old, so I remember life before cable TV, and I remember the real newsmen like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. Huntley and Brinkley. They were the giants who did the work that shaped peoples' opinions. They did all the groundwork, having started out at the bottom of the journalistic ladder. They knew how to triangulate a story, and how to deliver it.

They also knew who the bad guys were, and didn't hesitate to make it clear - in the most intelligent and subtle ways - to let their viewers know what they were thinking.

I remember "Meet The Press" when it had its original moderator, Martha Rountree, an amazing woman so far ahead of her time. By the time Lawrence Spivak took over, the show was THE place for politicians to be seen and to be questioned. It was SO smart and such an intelligent show.

No one cared who was pretty or handsome. They cared about who was smart and well-informed and articulate.

Cable television, with the striking exceptions of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and, randomly, Chris Matthews, is trash now, and I don't think we'll ever see anyone like the old giants ever again.

But I know how lucky I was to have been a precocious kid who took it all in even as elementary school keep me occupied. I might not have understood what was going on, but the substance got filled in as I went along. It was the process that I learned watching those people, and it's served me well all my life.

I seem to have gone on a rant here. Forgive me..................

It was the entertainment industry that drove Joe Jackson, though. He took advantage of his incredibly talented son and sold him to the industry. And he seems to be looking to do the same even after his death (I just saw him at the BET Awards show announcing some new record company he's putting together). So, indirectly perhaps, the industry is what did MJ in.

I'm a bit younger than you (I remember Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley, but I don't remember Murrow), but I know what you mean. It was a bit different back then. But during those days I was trying to figure out the dance moves I was seeing watching the Jackson Five on the Ed Sullivan show.

I was a bit chagrined the other day when Ed was doing his show pretty much all on MJ. Matthews, Olbermann seemed to be fine with it, and I kind of expected that from them, but Ed? I was kinda glad to see that Rachel didn't even do her show during those couple of days.

and I'm a Girl LaBamba.............

and they still reported some news

It all has to do with the Fairness Doctrine when they still had to serve a social role to get their license renewed. I suspect that is still in the law, but has not been enforced in decades now.

The OJ trial was somewhat of a break and a test to see if they could keep people's attention on a non news or soft news item. Never mind they had people transfixed over Watergate.

And yeah, the OJ trial was kind of a watershed for that kind of "news". and it seemed to take off from there.

Still, I feel that television has pretty much always been about getting as many eyeballs as possible. Hence, I rarely go there for substantial news.