On the day that Terri Schiavo’s autopsy is released, Fox News’s 8-10 PM lineup of Bill O’Reiley and Hannity and Colmes spent under a total of ten minutes on the subject, while the disappearance of Natalee Holloway was covered for an hour. Greta Van Susteren is on location in Aruba to undoubtedly devote as much of her hour as possible on this ongoing quest to somehow turn this disappearance into something as compelling as Terri Schiavo, Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart or Chandra Levy. Meanwhile, somewhere in America the next frail white hype is out there, about to make a bad mistake or even better, get drugged, raped and/or murdered. As long as it doesn’t happen before Natalee is either found or the ratings drop significantly, Fox News will be sure to turn this next victim into a legend.
Lamenting over the fact that hours are devoted to this current American fetish while Congress is in session and a war is being fought in Iraq can turn your hair white, so perhaps the way to go from here isn’t to restate the obvious, but rather take a look at the criteria. The first imperative is the story has to have an impending outcome that’s still up in the air. Unless authorities are still unable to close the case, there’s no opportunity for an on air analysis of every hypothetical imaginable. In the current case there’s an unfounded possibility that Natalee was drugged at some point, and so an ‘expert’ on the effects of a date rape drug was on the O’Reiley Factor to discuss whether or not trace elements would still be detectable in a corpse. Unfortunately they wouldn’t be able to tell, so if she were to be found and happened to be drugged, they’d never know. Who’s looking out for you? Indeed.
The next qualifier is there has to be a menacing back story full of characters that can be portrayed in a way that would make you leery of trusting them to empty your garbage barrels once a week. Ideally one of these people will have a face that can make the viewer believe some rumors involving sociopathy, murder for money or better yet, abduction for ransom. First two suspects in Natalee’s case were brown skinned, which was a major plus, but the investigation has thus far turned up nothing involving these two. Now there’s a white male involved as well, and while on the surface he seemed to look normal enough, a gift from heaven fell in the laps of newsroom producers when it was discovered that his father is in line for a possible judgeship. Needless to say, his stock has risen exponentially from this recent discovery. The Hannity and Colmes show lunged at the opportunity to hypothesize where investigators could have gone wrong with the interrogations and what their next step should be by bringing in a crack investigator we all remember from the OJ Simpson case, Mark Fuhrman.
I suppose this falls in with the logical idea that in order to catch a criminal, you have to think like a criminal. With two brown skinned suspects and a white one as well, if there was a guy you needed in a pinch to ‘close the case’, Fuhrman would definitely be the guy. Of course, he’s not allowed to carry a gun, run for office or wear the shield ever again due to a prior conviction on perjury charges, but he at one time was a cop. Fox News, being a network that views lies as a cost of doing business, a racist perjurer fits right in. Now with a guy like this involved in the coverage, the ‘what if’ parade is complete. Because unlike actual ‘news’, the product they’re selling, these white women, involve criminal investigations that require a basic level of secrecy that makes it impossible to notify the public of every fact as it’s discovered. So to eat up an hour of prime time every night, facts have to be predicted or fabricated. Bringing Fuhrman on board was a no brainer.
The final and most obvious pre-requisites are the race and sex of the victim. They have to, or have at one time in the past, been an attractive white female. Blond hair is ideal, but not a deal-breaker. As we’ve seen in the recent non-vegetative photos of Terri Schiavo, the bleach in a bottle look will suffice. The most important thing being a photo of a female, that when one imagines horrible things having been done to her, tugs at the heartstrings. To ensure that the heartstrings requirement is met, the victim absolutely must be white. Network research shows that if a Hispanic or black victim is featured, for some reason ratings in the midwest drop like a lead balloon. One theory I had explained to me by an anonymous network source was that during the prime time hours, white people are watching TV, while most minorities are busy cleaning up office buildings or out dealing drugs.
The source went on to explain how the business model I’ve described here has been the best thing to come around since terrorism, and studies have shown it has as much potential in the long run as the most reliable go-to story known today, cutting on liberals. As long as white girls continue to get into cars with strangers, kidnapped, murdered or have insane relatives, the revenue stream from covering their stories won’t dry up for a long time. Unlike the dark days of yesteryear when newsrooms were a hotbed of stressed out alcoholic fiends chasing after the same set of facts, we’re entering an easier time now, where the news can literally be whatever you make of it. As long as there’s a pretty face to put on the screen and heartstrings to be tugged, whatever’s going on in the world can just be ignored. Yes, the prayers of network executives for decades have been answered. Our soap operas and the news have been combined, and the working parents of America couldn’t be more grateful. And for all you pretty white girls in trouble out there, play your cards right, and you too could have a chance of being the next frail white hype.
White hype ? Aren’t you talking about a woman who was left to die and a missing young woman? This smacks of racism !
He’s talking about the fact that this is all a distraction. It eats up airtime, time that could be used to report real issues.
Racism? Seems like the racism is that only white victims get the fox treatment.
One thing about the victim dejour mentality of the right is that it gets them on TV and in the media. Talking heads like Hannity can pontificate about how this latest tragedy ties in with Bush’s war on terrorism. (on one web site, scaredmonkeys.com one of the comments suggested that the suspects in Aruba be siezed as enemy combatents and given the gitmo treatement) Liberals might be wise to learn how to talk about these tragedies as well as they seem to be what most of red America is concerned about.
This from the washingtonmonthly.com seems to fit.
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS….Last June, a black woman named Tamika Huston was reported missing by her family. USA Today picks up the story from there:
Rebkah Howard, Huston’s aunt and a public relations professional in Miami, tried to get the national media interested in the case. “I spent three weeks calling the cable networks, calling newspapers — even yours,” Howard said this week.
Not much happened.
….”It’s stunning sometimes how hard it is to get the national media interested when it’s a minority,” [said Philip Lerman, co-executive producer of America’s Most Wanted and a former editor at USA Today.]
Good for USA Today for writing about this. Maybe eventually this kind of publicity will embarrass the cable folks into finding something else to fill their airtime.
—Kevin Drum
Dear Paul,
BAAAAAAAAAAA
Good work Karl, you can lable this line of thought whatever you like if it makes you sleep better at night, but the fact is these news outlets only care about the bottom line, and white sells.
It’s amazing how these blown up instances are in reality happening around us everyday and yet they choose a winner and deliver it to the masses in such a way where suddenly a missing girl in Aruba is a much more pressing matter than the countless numbers of troops we are losing in Iraq everyday.
Which one strikes closer to home? I guess it may depend on whether you have a teenage daughter or a son who is about to graduate from highschool, either way you look at it I believe the latter of the two is much more pertinate to our everyday lives and anything else is just a distraction.
Its pretty obvious when someone is being disingenuous, I suppose it would be too much to blast this rhetoric at the news media in general. Its better to focus on one news media that you associate with “Fair and Balanced, to the Right”, for someone who loathes the Fox News channel, you sure watch it a lot. Guess it’s interesting enough to see how much you disagree with them, that you keep going back. CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, and all media, are covering the same stories, the all covered Terri Shiavo, they all covered Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and the Tsunami, and a whole list of news ‘worthy’ items. I’ve heard tell that Fox never does on-scene reporting, possibly even heard it form you, what the hell is Greta thinking? Going to Aruba, I bet she wants the paid vacation to the tropical island. Hannity deserves to be fired for going to the Mexican border, and down to Florida to interview the Schindler family, he doesn’t understand that Fox news shouldn’t cover the news from anywhere other than in a studio. Because it makes it harder to believe someone’s analysis when they are sitting in a cold empty studio 2000 miles away, as opposed to being right where the news is coming from.
Karl-You just made my point with your article, “spent three weeks calling the cable networks, calling newspapers — even yours” it isn’t just Fox news; it’s the news media as a whole who has a problem.
We can all agree that cable news is unscrupulous and narrow. But when does it go beyond compaining? Is there anything we can do besides compain? This is not a rant, per se, but an honest question.
Who would have ever thought that a news network would spent hours upon hours a day, week in week out, talking about one Alabama girl or one Georgian brunette.
Although, having recently went through a new employee orientation with two young ladies from Mississippi and Alabama, I can see the interest they spark.
Michael I agree, while foxnews may be the easy one to pick on this issue certainly goes well beyond one particular media outlet and seemingly portrays a substantial segment of the entire industry.
Micheal:
Hannity was out of the country recentely? Where was he the night Aruba girl disapeared? I am pretty sure Nancy Grace would have killed the runaway bride if she knew that the women was going to show up. You are right though it is not just Faux news all of them do it. If it bleeds it leads, especially if it is virgin white blood.
My point is that rather than bashing the media for pandering to the American public, liberals should learn to exploit it as well as the right wing has.
Why focus on Foxnews for what they all are doing? What’s the big deal? Liberals should be happy that the media is protecting them form the Bolton and Judicial scandals that have rocked the liberal establishment.
Democrats have all but dismantled their own party, that’s what I want to read about. Howard Dean is screaming “LOOK AT ME, I’M OUTA MY MIND, LOOK AT ME!!!!” and that gets a pass. I think Dean should get a microphone and 5 minutes a night to Dean Scream his loonyness.
All cable news is guilty of this, but I point out Fox News because of the fact that out of all the networks, they were the network that had the doctor…Hamishofor (sp?) who Sean Hannity first called ‘a nobel prize winning doctor’, then ‘a doctor who’s nominated for a nobel prize’ on the show saying that he could save Terri with some treatment. Making it seem like with his help, she was a few steps away from the racquetball court.
As it turns out, the doctor was never nominated for the Nobel Prize, but was actually a political operative from Florida. It was an outright lie. As were the stream of guests Hannity had on saying that Terri was responsive, could feel pain, could recognize people. The story about the balloon.
Fox News pumped this one specific story for all it was worth, and played right into the GOP script by hammering the ‘activist’ judges who ‘executed’ her. They’d air anyone who wanted to trash Michael. It was a complete whitewash.
Now that the autopsy is out, and literally every single one of their guests they trotted out, who lied right into the screen have been proven as such. They have 3 minutes on O’Reiley and ‘maybe’ 5 on Hannity and Colmes. Meanwhile the missing girl got a full hour combined from 8-10 PM.
This is an attack on Fox News, sure. But to whitewash the entire thing as, ‘well everyone COVERED it’, is to ignore specifically how far Fox went and how shamefull it all was.
And if there was one moment last night that really knocked the issue home…on the ‘unintentional comedy scale’…it was having Mark Fuhrman on to discuss the criminal investigation down in Aruba. For this network, that type of irony goes right over their heads.
A good example of the double standard is look at the drubbing newsweek took over the story about Koran abuse which later turned out to tbe true. Liberal bias in the news media is a myth, but conservatives will continue to play the “we are the victim” card as long as they can.
Mark fuhrman, Ollie north, does fox love perjurs.
Remember, Hanity and O’Reiley are part of the opnion section and not the news section. There were plenty of people on the left who were as vociferous, if not more, to have her killed.
It sounds like you are angry at the people whose opinions differ and got airtime to push those opinions. Why should everyone have to tow the NYT political line?
This whole issue is irrelevant because it is in our Constitution that people have freedom of expression, all the people, not just the NYT. Bask in the depth and reach of the social commentary that took place. Journalism classes will have material to pour over for decades to come.
I for one am glad that there are various and differing views that are avalable to me. You don’t see this in places like France or China and maybe not even Italy. This was a great intellectual debate about how we treat our sick and disabled and I hope that you can enjoy that fact that we were able, as a society, to have this public discussion. We weren’t able to save Terri but the firefighter made it though and hopefully the other will have enough time for medicine to help them too.
Right:
The right seemed to personalize the whole debate, you know calling the husband names and implying that he abused her. Debate is a good thing, the problem is when the conservatives do not have the facts to back it up they immediately resort to personal attacks. It is the same when sometimes I am to lazy to respond to what you say so I just call you a troll. Now that you are part of the establishment here, I might just calling you “wrong thinker” or something like that.
“wrong thinker”
Hey, that’s prety creative but what’s the point? If your too lazy to engage in thoughtful dialogue why call me anything at all. Why even participate?
Debate is a good thing, the problem is when the conservatives do not have the facts to back it up they immediately resort to personal attacks.
Not everything can have facts, we thought we knew what the moon was like before Armstrong went there but until that time all we had was intelligent debate.
The problem with Michael was he opened himself to personal attacks, we know the lawsuit was to get money to take care of Terri and then, once he gets the money, it is time to pull the plug. Liberals say it’s the best for Terri but with the husband standing there with a million in settlement money and estate next to his girlfriend and “out-of-wedlock” children can you be certain he’s all of a sudden doing what Terri would have wanted?
Based on the facts I think this was the divorce OJ Simpson and Robert Blake were looking for, kill the wife, get the goods, run free.
Right – I think he was just using that as a hypothetical, as if to say…if I were to go the route of Hannity on the Terri Shaivo thing in how he talked about Michael, the equivalent would be me referring to you as ‘wrong thinker’ every time I addressed something you wrote.
I don’t think karl was trying to insult you, but to make a point in how he perceives the Fox talkers treated this story.
karl – Right, is this accurate?
People love to hear themselves talk don’t they? 🙂
You’re right about the value of a public debate on this issue, but when it’s approached in such a slanted way, what we actually get out of it is minimized.
There were right wing radio hosts in my neck of the woods who just left it alone. They realized that what was going down went against their conservative belief that government shouldn’t play a role in family decisions, and they chose not to cover it.
Howie Carr was the guy I remember most who left it alone, but he’s sandwiched in between Rush and Savage…Savage went WAY over the top on this one.
The mechanism in place in our media today doesn’t allow for the kind of open debate we value so much in this country. The host is selling a product, and more often than not, the product is extremely slanted one way or the other.
Chris thanks for defending me, I need that sarcasm font again. Maybe I will start adding smiley faces.
Speaking of facts didn’t Micheal spend a majority of the money in attempts to treat Terri.
I believe he recieved a million dollars of which $700,000 went for treatment.
South Park seemed to get the Chiavo situation about right, it was really hard to side with either the parents or the husband.
My opinion is that if she was not in any pain what is the harm in keeping her alive, I know you could argue that it is a waste of resources, but all in all if her parents want to keep her alive let them. On the other hand if you really believe in heaven why not let her go.
The reason that Chiavo turned into such a Debacle is that it seemed like it was social conservatives versus fiscal conservatives.
Hey wrong I mean right:
“Hey, that’s prety creative but what’s the point? If your too lazy to engage in thoughtful dialogue why call me anything at all. Why even participate?”
Why participate? if you are Hannity you have a lot of air time to fill, and in some cases not a lot to fill it with, couple that with the fact that Hannity and co start with their conclusions and work backwords and you can see why they fil time with name calling and ad hominen arguments.
This might be part of the problem with 24 HR news, they have a lot of time to fill, so they fill it with speculation and opinion. Maybe they should be more like Joe Friday, just the facts.
Are you sure the ground is to hard for basements? How do the bury all the bodies then?
I didn’t even know what emoticons were for years…my brother had Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons on his cell phone voice mail message saying, ‘There is no emoticon, for what I’m feeling’…and I didn’t get the joke until about a year ago.
I think Right just misunderstood there.
South Park did hit it right on the head. It ran the night before she passed. Keeping her around in that condition just seems like a certain sort of sickness to me. The doctors had said since 1992 what the autopsy confirmed. It seemed like they had a problem with Michael and were using Terri as a wedge.
It’s a personal matter, and the authorities had to get involved for the parent’s sake. Does anyone have the right to do what they wanted to do? Without Terri’s approval, was it their right to keep her like that? From a spiritual standpoint, if her soul is held up because of the machines…did her parents have a right to do that?
Without right this would be a pretty dull place. It is to bad more sites don’t encourage people from both sides to participate. I work with a bunch of people who are very conservative and for the most part they are not bad, and their is a lot of common ground between us. Hopefully people will start to realize that the other party is not the anti-christ.
I agree. Right has a couple more articles on the way, and once the number increase, I hope to attract some more conservative users.
I don’t think karl was trying to insult you, but to make a point in how he perceives the Fox talkers treated this story.
I didn’t think so either but I though HE was saying it might be easier no to get involved in debate where other opinions might be expressed. And “wrong thinker” was creative.
Maybe they should be more like Joe Friday, just the facts.
I don’t know about that, when I hear the left making bad or good points it just makes me work harder at understanding my own beliefs. I’m not being told what to think, rather, my position is being challenged and if I can rise to the challenge than my beliefs hold, if not, then I need to re-examine my beliefs.
That’s the reason I listen to Limbaugh every once in a while. The dangerous thing though about O’Reiley, Hannity, Chris Matthews or Scarbarough though is that they’re broadcasting on a channel that has ‘News’ on the screen during the entire broadcast. Limbaugh’s show doesn’t carry the same falsehood along with it’s broadcast.
Studies have shown that when asked questions like, ‘were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?’, Fox News watchers incorrectly answer ‘yes’ up to 20% more often than people who get their news elsewhere. This aggregate effect shows exactly why it’s a bad thing.
These 24 hour ‘news’ stations should tell the facts and if these pundits want a show, they should have it on a private network. The ability to tell lies under the guise of ‘news’ is damaging to the public.
I think the accuracy of the news that’s reported to Americans should be accurate. If lies are told, the FCC should levy fines like they do for obcenity on the airwaves.
The mainstream media catches up to deadissue…finally!
Source
Its all smoke and mirrors designed to take away from whats really going on in America. Nobody touches the major racial issues of our time except to fan the flames of discontent and the list goes on and on. When murder and rape stories become mindless entertainment for folks what does that say about us. These people have very powerful platforms and they only use them to feed the sickened masses more poison. This is highly negative but I say fuck them all they can all go to hell.
I noticed you commented on my little blast of Nancy Grace thanks for stopping by.
Sonicrusk and I go way back, and I’d been meaning to comment at your site for quite a while now, but w/ school, the twins, the bills etc…
I’ll be around – – – Thanks for checking out this one, very proud of this piece.
Hell, on days I work my 12-hour shift, I can barely do anything, especially if i have to be back at work less than 12 hours later.
It’s not even worth trying to prioritize the blog into that schedule. If you’re up for it, that’s one thing…it’s entertainment afterall.
True dat. Not only do I have more time on my days off, but more energy and imagination. Something really has to flow from the fingers to get written after work. it has happened a few times. Hell, a few times I’ve written something before work at 0600. Now that’s inspiration!
I’ve been getting these blasts of inspiration right after submitting an assignment that took me a long time to complete…like the comment on the DLI post…I had just finished something and it came natural. Not always, but for the most part, the relief of having something finished is good for some manic energy.
I’ve tried to find where that energy comes from. Sunlight sometimes helps. Whenever I finished a large assignment, all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and watch TV.