Let this happen to you
So it's Sunday morning, you're all congested and shit from some vicious head cold that's plaguing your body, and you just played a really shitty hand of poker where you went all in on an open-ended straight draw with 6-6, board was 3-4-5, and other dude had 6-7.
What do you do?
Well, you obviously look for solace in Dish Network. I finished watching Sweden eke out a victory in OT over Finland (great game), and looked at the next channel below channel 2. Of course, it was channel 9415, Free Speach TV. This is the same channel that has the Democracy Now! woman who is a little too real for me. But they had an awesome program (I think it was called "War of Mass Deception") on the US media and their role in the Iraq invasion. Pretty fascinating stuff. It reminded me of Control Room, but this time taking all the major networks to task. Really explained a lot about how and why the war came into our living rooms. It was certainly a lot of information: after all, they covered about 2 years in 2 hours. But I look forward to more programming like this. Of course it was leftist, but once you see a show like this, you realize how utterly ridiculous all the "liberal media" outcries really are. Anyway, check out a program on it sometime; the website is here, though it really doesn't do or say much so I'm just adding it for a source should you need to know it exists.
posted by Jefe at 11:42 AM
3 Comments:
I find just watching the BBC world news cast gets you the footage that American TV doesn't show. It's very odd because it's not even footage of people killing each other or servicemen being attacked (which US networks have specifically said they won't show), it's just a lot more regular footage of stuff going on in, say Iraq.
It could have something to do with a genuine preference for talking heads in the US but more likely it has something to do with the fact that even major US networks have like 2 foreign correspondents where the BBC has hundreds.
2:17 PM
To play devil's advocate, what's the value-added of playing gory battlefield footage?
I realize I'm probably giving The People too much credit, but arguing that we need gruesomeness to convince people that the Iraq war is going badly is like saying that we need more sandwich boards w/ pictures of aborted fetuses (fetii?) near the Planned Parenthood (next door to my cat's veterinary clinic; across the street from my gf's apartment) to convince people that abortion is bad.
3:35 PM
Right, my point isn't the gory battlefield footage, I actually don't have a problem with US networks not covering that like Al Jazeera or whatever does.
My whole point was that it goes beyond nasty battlefield footage to just mundane stuff that the BBC will show footage of and US networks rely on a talking head for. Protests in place; damage to something, etc. US news has a talking head say something about it while BBC in my experience has video of it. It just strikes me as odd because you'd think the US audience would be all about pictures and video instead of explication.
4:26 PM
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