Tag: reporting

Climate Change ‘no longer newsworthy’ says Media in 2010

The Daily Climate has a breakdown of the past decade of America’s corporate-held media’s coverage of climate change, where they found that 2010 was the year climate coverage ‘fell off the map’. Media coverage of climate change in 2010 dropped globally by 30 percent since 2009 and “slipped to levels not seen since 2005”.

Corporate broadcast news coverage of climate change was so insignificant that Robert Brulle, a Drexel University professor, who has analyzed nightly news coverage of climate change stories, said he is doubting his data. “I can’t believe it’s this little. In the U.S., it’s just gone off the map,” he said.

“The cycle of media interest in climate change has run its course, and this story is no longer considered newsworthy,” Brulle said. Total coverage of the UN climate talks in Cancun last month by the networks was a single 10-second clip, he said.

Underwater, the Water’s Fine — Anyone want to take a Dip?

Photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil

Journalist dives into Gulf, can only see oil

It takes 30 minutes to clean off after diving into ocean 40 miles from shore

By RICH MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer June 9, 2010

Eeewwwh!!   WHAT was he thinking!

Hope you have a De-tox tank, handy, Rich Matthews — you’re going to need it!

Photo Credit: June 7, 2010 photo, APTN photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La.. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

View related Photos

APTN photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La.. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

MSNBC – Updated: 5:54 a.m. ET June 9, 2010

but wait this intrepid Reporter goes deeper …

Visualization, Framing, and that War of Words

Framing, as a theoretical concept, emerged from agenda setting–the notion that media coverage does not tell the public what to think, but it does have an effect in telling them what subjects to think about. (3)

Framing took agenda setting beyond audience salience and added that media coverage also indicated how that subject was to be approached by the audience, the acceptable range of terms, connections, and interpretations […]

Framing also has roots in cognitive theories about how the human brain works. (6) It ties into schema theory, the idea that the synapses of our brains do not purely save and store facts. Instead, our brains link related ideas in associative patterns; ideas fitting patterns more easily find room than those with no existing “hook” to hold them.

Ideas need the right frame to have a lasting impact.

A frame must find a common “hook” in order to take up its new residence.

McCain campaign strategy working: media reporting “no difference” re Global Warming

A critical Republican campaign strategy is working when it comes to framing for the November election. Despite actual facts, media reporting increasingly reports that there is no difference of import between John McSame McCain and Barack Obama when it comes to the arenas of energy and Global Warming. Take David Kesterbaum’s NPR report yesterday.

If you are trying to figure out whom to vote for in the upcoming presidential race, the issue of climate change may not be much help. This is one area where both leading candidates for president do not have a lot to disagree about.

Shallow, misinformed, and misleading reporting is about the most polite way to describe Kestenbaum’s report which focuses solely on selected sound-bytes rather than the substance of the two candidates’ positions.

There are fundamental differences between McSame’s and Obama’s positions and fundamental differences about the prospects for the future between President McSame and President Obama.  Differences that Kesterbaum reporting will leave you ignorant about.

THANK you, Eric Boehlert!

If you haven’t read Smirking Chimp writer Eric Boehlert’s excellent column regarding the shameless double standard in media coverage of John McCain, now is the time to do it.  There are some grammatical errors, but beyond those, the piece does a superb job of pointing out the tepid criticism of just one of the Republican candidate’s endless series of lies – compared to its record of pouncing on nearly everything, no matter how innocent, uttered by Democratic candidates as pathological deceptions.  Boehlert systematically dismantles the new Lie being promulgated that the media has somehow “turned” on McCain.

Barack Obama does not support the return of the Fairness Doctrine.  He should, if for no other reason than it would place some restraints on media goons who play favorites during electoral cycles.  Please use the comment feature for ideas on how we can get the Democratic candidate to change his mind.

What’s Goin’ On? Is there really a War on?

The Iraq War, for it or against it, justified or unjustified, has not been reported fairly. On this point, everyone agrees.  That the good news has not been shown is just as true as that the bad news has not been shown.  The truth about just what has been reported is in question here.

The ACLU recently reported the extent to which the Pentagon has tightly controlled the flow of information that is available to the American Public.  There are no photos of caskets, no battle field footage that hasn’t been re-run thousands of times, no images of dead people.  Read that last one again… no photos, videos or even realistic reporting about DEAD people.  It’s almost as if the war has been sanitized to the point that even the “official” casualty lists do not sound real.  What’s goin’ on?

With all due respect to both sides of the debate, the American people have not ever yet truly participated in the experience of the war.  We haven’t seen dead soldiers return in flag draped coffins and we haven’t been able to mourn them or truly honor their sacrifice.  We haven’t seen the extent of the human casualties both civilian and military, enemy and ally to truly appreciate the horror of what has been accomplished.  We’ve only seen the scrubbed version of the war, the sanitized version that the Pentagon has gone to great lengths and considerable expense to present to us.

   “At every step of the way, the Bush administration and Defense Department have gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “Our democracy depends on an informed public and that is why it is so important that the American people see these documents. These documents will help to fill the information void around the issue of civilian casualties in Iraq and will lead to a more complete understanding of the prosecution of the war.”

When the real sights and sounds, horror and bloodshed of the reality in Iraq finally become known, will history treat our government harshly or will it be regarded as a necessary component of modern war?  Did the military truly learn the lesson of Vietnam in that the bloodshed, violence, and mayhem of war be hidden from the citizenry at all cost?  We’re there, we’re not leaving, and we the people are ignorant of the true cost in blood and sacrifice.

Yes, we do not hear the good news, but neither do we hear the bad. I fear that the war WILL go on forever, as long as the official Pentagon version of the events in Iraq is all we hear.  I fear that the citizens of this country will not be stirred to truly rise up against it, because we’ve been anesthetized to it’s horror.  I fear that the horrible reality of war has been transformed into glorious conquest in a cruel attempt to justify it’s fearful cost.