Rajjpuut Begins Weekly Media Evaluation
By any measure, July, 2010 was a Bad Day at Black Rock for the journalistic professionals, particularly the MSM (mainstream media). Hoping that July 31, marks the lowest of the low and a media resurgence is in the air . . . .
MEDIA MEASURES July 23 - 30, 2010
Rajjpuut hopes to stimulate the rebound of the American Journalistic Profession by running a weekly blog to be called “Media Measure” highlighting the best and the worst aspects of journalism over the past seven days. Since at present the weakest area of the media is political coverage, until further notice that will be the emphasis for Media Measure. But is such a blog truly necessary? Judge for yourself . . . .
The last full week in July, 2010, saw ten key stories play out in the political arena. Here’s a summary of what’s went on:
#1 Wikileak Reveals over 100,000 leaked Afghanistan War documents:
EVENT: A blogsite releases huge amounts of Field documents on the Afghanistan War many of which are covered in depth by the NY Times, etc.
IMPORTANCE: Unlike the “Pentagon Papers” released during the Viet Nam War this is NOT a case of our government lying to us, but rather someone getting a lot of secret documents and releasing them. It appears that the lives of troops on the ground are not that important and certainly in the Wikileak version, many Taliban informants are outright named in the documents putting their lives in danger. The NY Times ran the story but was about 95% effective in taking out names and GPS coordinates and other key information. Wiklieak and the NY Times both slanted things anti-war.
Best Reporting: ABC FOX NEWS CBS
Other: WS Journ jumped the shark to accuse liberal media of wanting to end the Afghan War without considering consequences. Excuse me? This is journalism, getting inside other journalists’s heads without proof? FACTS, FACTS, FACTS, please.
#2 JournoList Conspiracy to slant news
EVENT: After e-mail leaks, over 400 liberal journalists, academicians, media people are discovered to be involved in a thirteen-year old conspiracy via e-mail called JournoList to slant news coverage in the country.support Barack Obama and distract attacks on him using the terms “racist” and “racism.”
IMPORTANCE: Why is it that some seemingly important news doesn’t get covered while other trivial or even distorted stories are covered in sickening depth? This could be the answer. This 400+ person group conspired to lessen the impact of the “God Damn America” story with Obama’s reverend Wright by downplaying, by ignoring and by seeking or making unsubstatiated charges against conservative leaders. One woman journalist told the boys to bite the bullet on Wright that she was hurt “as a woman and a journalist” by having to ignore Monica, Jennifer Flowers, etc. for the good of the cause. These people conspired to make Barack Obama president and he succeeded.
Best Reporting: Only FOX NEWs covered the story with any depth; only FOX noted that JournoList had become extinct overnight, but that the group was still getting together as a new listserv group called CabalList.
Other: The Wall Street Journal has long criticized the MSM for left-leaning media bias, now when the proof is handed them, they completely bumble the coverage. WSJ did a horrible job on the two main stories of the week.
#3 Obama and Biden Begin “Summer of Recovery Tour”
Event: The President and VP are campaigning under the guise of a “look what great things we’ve done for you” evaluation of the economic situation.
Importance: Media coverage is automatic. If Media doesn’t put the “tour” in its proper light (a propaganda event at every stop rather than as hard news (which Obama prefers) than the Big Lie that “He’s saved us from a Great Depression” has a chance at being successfully sold and the administration's failure to provide jobs will be overlooked. Rather than using the Stimulus money back in early 2009 as one would expect, NOW, the administration is releasing a bunch of it to highlight their “tour."
Best Reporting: only FOX News and WSJ questioned the administrations, facts figures and conclusions every step of the way. Virtually all the rest of the media all the time covered the events as isolated incidents and gave ultra-positive coverage to the adminstration.
#4 and #5 and #6 Reverse-Racism Scandals Rock the DOJ + Sherrod firing by the Agriculture Department
Events: A) Obama appointee Deputy Attorney General Julie Fernandez, heading up the DOJ, has told a roomful of Department of Justice Employees there is “no interest” in investigating or prosecuting voter-intimidation or discrimination cases with White victims and Black perpetrators; and that the DOJ will not investigate violations of the Motor Voter Law “because it would dampen turnout.” B) the DOJ dropped a case won by the Bush administration against four New Black Panthers who intimidated a Black poll watcher and White voters in Philadelphia during the Presidential elections giving one Panther less than a slap on the wrist “punishment” and exonerating the rest. In another “racially-tinged matter, the administration, the Agriculture Department and the NAACP all rushed to judgment and fired a Black employee for racism; then reviewed the evidence and sought to apologize while accusing FOX News of causing their mistake.
IMPORTANCE: Is that the Department of INjustice? The first “post-racial” president has used the words “race,” “racism” and “racist” as the cornerstone of their reason for being and as their excuse for every charge of incompetence brought against them. Accusations are treated most often by the mainstream media as PROOF without further investigation (such as the “N-word” controversy during the Obamacare vote passage . . . despite literally hundreds of videocameras, the N-word was never used at that event). FOX news actually dragged its feet and did NOT cover the story until after Ms. Sherrod was fired despite administration and NAACP claims to the contrary. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity of FOX covered the firing and the abbreviated video clip condemning Sherrod as the NAACP had and as the president and Agri-Dept did in firing her. O’Reilly and Hannity apologized to Ms. Sherrod once they had the full tapes (apologies do NOT happen in the MSM even though they have much more to apologize for than FOX).
Best Reporting: No one looked particularly good WSJ with a B- and FOX with a C+ were easily best. The rest of the media ran the NAACP and administration line that FOX had caused the Sherrod fiasco without checking it out, and of course, never apologized to FOX. Most importantly, the MSM ignored the Julie Fernandez and Black Panther stories for the most part and earned an F- as a group.
#7 White House memo on Amnesty by Presidential Edict is revealed
Event: An undated White House memo discusses the option of Presidential Directive to provide Amnesty for illegal aliens without resorting to congress
Importance: President Obama seems bent upon making the U.S. congress a rubber-stamp organization or totally irrelevant. This is clearly an unconstitutional act being contemplated
Best Reporting: ABC A FOX News B+ Too often FOX opinion commentators get off track forgetting that opinion is only valid if facts are there to support them. ABC was truly the “fair and balanced” people on this story. The problem was that there was just too little evidence to allow conjecture of the sort that FOX’s Hannity for example allowed himself to make. FOX New’s straight news coverage was actually a bit better than ABC’s but FOX opinion folk need to learn restraint. Yes, 55% of the voters now DO call Obama a “socialist” but moving from there to dictator in one fell swoop is not professional without evidence to back it up.
Lesser Stories: #8 Gulf Oil Leak Nearing Resolution? #9 Arizona Anti-Illegal Immigration Law #10 Pelosi and Rangel Scandal
Events: Ongoing long-time hard news stories
Importance: is treatment objective and accurate? Does media hold government accountable?
Best Reporting: FOX News far and away A+. Wall St. Journal A- The MSM did its best coverage on the oil spill, BP and the moratorium, but many downplayed the moratorium story, thus protecting Obama. MSM showed very little appetite for Rangel’s corruption proceedings and totally went to bat for Obama in virtually all coverage of the Arizona law. According to the MSM, Rajjpuut, a half-Hispanic is an overt racist because he thinks the prefix “il” in the word “illegal” means something.
OVERALL GRADES for the Week of July 23-30, 2010:
FOX A-
Wall St. Jour C+
ABC C-
CBS D
NBC F
PBS 40%
WASH Post 30%
NY Times 10%
CNN Totally irrelevant
Critical Commentary:
FOX needs to remember that no one needs or wants pure opinion without a strong factual basis.
The Wall Street Journal with its narrower “business” orientation does work at a handicap to broadbased news organizations but can do better.
ABC showed itself capable of hard news treated evenly and in depth with: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/immigration-memo-republicans-accuse-obama-administration-scheming-amnesty/story?id=11288210
but needs to totally revamp to once again regain the glory of its earlier history.
CBS “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Or you Walter Cronkite?
NBC It’s been a long, long fall since Huntley-Brinkley.
PBS This is what the nation and “viewers like you” are paying for?
Washington Post Until they re-learn what journalism is about there is little hope. One only wonders if Mr. Obama gives them plenty of orgasms while bedding them.
NY Times Pushed the progressive Democrat agenda all week long. While it did much better than Wikileak, it still endangered our troops and Taliban informers unnecessarily.
CNN Back in the '90's, Rajjpuut some days would watch CNN coverage 3-4 hours a day, but look at their vaunted political coverage now:
CNN
Politics
· Broken Government
· CNN Polling Center
· State of the Union Address
· Midterm Elections
· The 44th President: The First Year
· Edward Kennedy: 1932-2009
· The Sotomayor Vote
· Election Center 2008
· Freshman Year
· Transition to Power
· The 44th President: Inauguration
· The 44th President: First 100 Days
Over all: A very bad week all around. Rajjpuut earned a 3.92 GPA and was his university’s “Academic Excellence Award” in Journalism winner, but takes no pride in that now . . . what a sorry disgraceful week to call oneself a “journalist!”
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
