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Posted on 09/06/2004 4:12:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Accepted wisdom says today's political conventions have become little more than gargantuan, glitzy commercials for each party, good mostly for showcasing each group's rhetoric and alerting inattentive potential voters to the home stretch of the presidential campaign.
And for proof, viewers need look no further than TV coverage of both the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Even big-name broadcasters seemed to give up during the Republican gathering last week, with soon-to-retire NBC anchor Tom Brokaw lamenting the stage-managed nature of the proceedings. With just three hours in prime time devoted to the event, Brokaw and his network news colleagues were prisoners of convention schedulers, who placed important speeches so close together, there was little room for extra content.
Despite hours more to fill, cable outlets rarely performed better. As a result, empty rhetoric often was passed along as indisputable fact, questionable connections went unchallenged (is it appropriate to cite the Iraq war as an effective response to the 9/11 attacks?) and hollow media images were presented as full-fledged character studies.
In the unerring way TV has of reflecting society while affecting it, coverage seemed to accept the idea that no news was afoot; even the outbursts of protesters during speeches were rarely explained. Viewers would not be blamed for wondering how many thousands of dollars TV outlets were spending to serve as stenographers for the GOP party line.
The few times outlets interrupted punditry and strategy talk to fact-check convention speakers, most notably when CNN dissected Georgia Democrat Zell Miller's angry anti-Kerry rant, the result was informative television that demonstrated the power of injecting a little journalism into reports.
If broadcasters can cover Olympic games with at least a seven-hour time difference, it seems likely they could find a new way to cover political conventions that herald one of the most important political choices voters will make.
To do otherwise is to perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophecy; allowing TV networks to further justify reducing coverage using their own uninspired efforts as an empty explanation.
In the process, citizens get one more reason to remain uninformed until Election Day.
Speaking of bias, the St. Pete Slimes sucks. If you're reading this paper, you're just helping the left. Pick up a copy of something better. I'd sooner get my Tampa Bay local news from the Ocala Star-Banner than read that commie crap.
This guy is starting to get it. Yes, we do wonder how much money the networks spend to convey political messages. By the way dude, it was fun to see them spend a few bucks on us for a change.
The more they bash Zell the more we know he was effective.
Jim Lehrer really criticized the main stream media for their lack of attention to the conventions and suggested they ought to get out of the news business and stick to entertainment.
Sheesh. Can their liberal bias get any more blatant?
Or what we call, BIAS!
the result was informative television that demonstrated the power of injecting a little journalism into reports.
Or what we call SPIN!
Were they as upset by what they saw at the Demorat convention? I doubt it!
They were THRILLED to only have to show three hours of the flat, lifeless, uninspired Democratic convention.
Of course not--there weren't any "spontaneous" outbreaks of protesting.
The gull of that editorial writer! We, apparently, the unwashed, cannot comprehend the speeches nor the actions shown by the TV cameras, without a bunch of dufuss, pious, babbling talking heads explaining it to us and give THEIR opinions? Help get this guy/gal off the print media FAST!
That is beginning to happen already, as evidenced by convention coverage this year. As the mainstream of America moves to the right and alphabet network news departments continue moving leftward, alternative media is becoming the prime news source for more and more citizens. As the bottom line shrinks, so will news department budgets until - voila: no more news on networks.
He's right - NBC and Broke-now would have loved to have a lot more time to have McCrazy come on and try to break the GOP's kneecaps.
Right Tom! Not like those patriotic demoncRATS who waved thousands of tiny US Flags - and them immediately threw them away and ON THE FLOOR when the cameras went off!
As Eric Cartman would say, "Screw you".
"...to serve as stenographers for the GOP party line."
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I heard a pro-Kerry commentator say this on a Sunday show. Is this a new talking point, or is the St Pete editorialist just "borrowing" a good line?
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Also -
I guess instant rebuttal is called "fact-checking" when the speech is not favorable to Kerry.
We did this on purpose, ya morons, to prevent your rabid leftist "extra content".
He can't figure out whether to prove them right that he wasn't fit to moderate or simply move his america hating agenda along without regard to his rep. After all, he's rich now thanks to his story about WW II.
Talking heads, info babes and anchors, desperate to spin for Kerry and bash Bush, just can't stand a speech standing on it's own. Goodness, gracious! What is the world of journalism coming to?
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