The Nascar Nightly News: Anchorman Get Your Gun

NY Times ^ | 12/05/2004 | FRANK RICH

[dnmore]

IF Democrats want to run around like fools trying to persuade voters in red America that they are kissing cousins to Billy Graham, Minnie Pearl and Li'l Abner, that's their problem. Pandering, after all, is what politicians do, especially politicians as desperate as the Democrats. But when TV news organizations start repositioning themselves to pander to Nascar dads and "moral values" voters, it's a problem for everyone.

There's a war on. TV remains by far the most prevalent source of news for Americans. We need honest information to help us navigate, not bunkum skewed to flatter one segment of the country, whatever that segment might be. Yet here's how Jeff Zucker, the NBC president, summed up the attributes of Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw's successor, to Peter Johnson of USA Today: "No one understands this Nascar nation more than Brian." Mr. Zucker was in sync with his boss, Bob Wright, the NBC Universal chairman, who described America as a "red state world" on the eve of Mr. Brokaw's retirement. Though it may come as news to those running NBC, we actually live in a red-and-blue-state country, in a world that increasingly hates all our states without regard to our provincial obsession with their hues. Nonetheless, Mr. Williams, who officially took over as anchor on Dec. 2, is seeking a very specific mandate. "The New York-Washington axis can be a journalist's worst enemy," he told Mr. Johnson, promising to spend his nights in the field in "Dayton and Toledo and Cincinnati and Denver and the middle of Kansas." (So much for San Francisco - or Baghdad.)

[lancer]

We need honest information to help us navigate, not bunkum skewed to flatter one segment of the country,

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! That is RICH! LOL! Does he not see the irony!!??

[Coyoteman]

We need honest information to help us navigate, not bunkum skewed to flatter one segment of the country, whatever that segment might be.

This from the NY Times? Pot? Kettle? Black??

[Dana113]

Oh dear. I can't believe the NY Times is calling for more honest news. shocked..........

[GianniV]

I have a dream - the NY Times will one day be financially bankrupt and di-kheads like Frank Rich will have to crawl to places like Nebraska for work. Just a dream right now - but everyone has to have dreams.

[OldBullrider]

"most Americans continue to tell pollsters that the nation is on the wrong track"

Same pollsters that did the election night exit polls I suppose.

"Kevin Sites, the freelance TV cameraman who caught a marine shooting an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque"

This guy Frank Rich, he gets paid for writing garbage like this. Does F.R. know for sure that the terrorist that was shot was a prisoner, or is he writing this to make people think that is what happened. This is enough... how do fellows like this continue to be called reporters? And that is "Marine" with a capital "M" moron.

[Goodgirlinred]

This year my 17 year old nephew brought me into the light. I had stopped watching the big three network news programs long ago because I could not stand their biased reporting. However I was not up on current events. My nephew introduced me to FOX News. Now I am an avid fan. Fair and unbiased news. They also show the positive things coming out of Iraq. Praise the Lord! I think calling us the Nascar whatever is demeaning. Nothing wrong with being a Nascar fan, but I don't happen to be one. They are using it to call us a bunch of hicks. Well, we are not! They are a bunch of idiots, pampered and spoiled and overpaid!

[pjsbro]

Rich wants to believe that the Iraqi was a prisoner. His piece would be far less pointed if he had correctly characterized the incident as a Marine shooting a combatant.

And Rich is concerned about honest reporting in the MSM????

Similarly annoying is Rich's constant surrounding the phrase moral values with quotation marks. Obviously he and his readers are not familiar with the concept.

[Libertarian444]

Though the retrospective paid tribute, as Mr. Brokaw often has, to his roots in deeply red South Dakota, the career highlights that unfurled were not tied to any agenda but the stories the anchor reported.

Yeah right, Frank. Whatever.

http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20041130.asp#1

 

Brokaw Disrespect for '94 GOP Win, Insists
Reagan Short on AIDS

     Tom Brokaw, who in 1994 dismissed the Contract with America as "long on promises and short on sound premises," in his two-hour Friday night Dateline special, Tom Brokaw: Eyewitness to History, gave a mere ten seconds to the 1994 GOP congressional takeover as he focused the entirety of the brief segment on showing himself asking Newt Gingrich: "Do you regret saying that the Clinton administration is the enemy of normal people?" Brokaw gave just as much time to touting Clinton's booming economy, though he didn't mention anything about Reagan's economic rebound and instead asserted that "even Ronald Reagan's close friends and advisors will say on the issue of race, for example, he was stuck in the late 1930s, early 1940s. He could be stubborn, sometimes to a fault. He was much too slow to respond to the AIDS crisis."

     The MRC's Megan McCormack tracked down these comments from Brokaw in the November 26 at 9pm EST/PST special in which Brokaw recalled major events he covered, starting with the civil rights movement and Vietnam in the late 1960s when he was with KNBC-TV in Los Angeles. NBC mixed Brokaw's current recollections, made in front of river and White House backdrops, with archival video and contemporary soundbites from those involved in the historic events.

     Tom Brokaw: Eyewitness to History will replay Sunday night at 8pm EST/PST on MSNBC.

     About a half hour into the two-hours Brokaw got to Ronald Reagan's presidency. After noting how some saw him as a "knight in shining armor" for getting the hostages released and acknowledging that he had "extraordinary political talents," Brokaw maintained over clips of Reagan and himself with Reagan:
     "Ronald Reagan put a sunny disposition on conservatism. He is the Godfather of the modern political conservative movement in this country. It drove liberals crazy that he could be as successful as he was. Even Ronald Reagan's close friends and advisors will say on the issue of race, for example, he was stuck in the late 1930s, early 1940s. He could be stubborn, sometimes to a fault. He was much too slow to respond to the AIDS crisis. But on balance, if you look at how the nation responded to Ronald Reagan's death, an entire week of celebration and mourning, that tells you a lot about what you need to know about Ronald Reagan's place in our contemporary history."

     Arriving at 1994 about 40 minutes later, Brokaw took 15 seconds to highlight the OJ trial, then gave ten seconds to the Republican takeover of the House and Senate. Over three seconds of 1994 video of Newt Gingrich walking into room with a cheering crowd and a zoom in on a "Sweep the House" sign, viewers heard audio from an archived Brokaw interview with Gingrich followed by video of Gingrich's reply. Brokaw had asked: "Do you regret saying that the Clinton administration is the enemy of normal people?" Gingrich answered: "Yes, truth is occasionally [slaps hand on forehead], I'm not very smart."

     (Time has apparently not improved Brokaw's opinion of the Contract with America. Here's how he introduced a September 27, 1994 NBC Nightly News preview of it: "Today, GOP congressional candidates were summoned to Washington and given a battle plan. However, as NBC's Lisa Myers tells us tonight, it is long on promises and short on sound premises.")

     Brokaw devoted several minutes to the Lewinsky scandal, but having skipped Reagan's economic boom, reviewing 1998 he offered up this vintage news clip of himself: "There was some very good news out of Washington and the American economy."
     Bill Clinton at Rose Garden event: "The budget surplus will be $39 billion this year."
     Brokaw: "That's the result of record low unemployment, and the tax revenue that goes with it."

     On screen, a 1998 graphic with a picture of Bill Clinton beside these statements:
- Fiscal Year 1998 surplus: $39 billion
- First since 1969
- Record Low Unemployment

[pjsbro]

All three network newscasts, not to mention the morning-news franchises led by "Today," draw exponentially more viewers than even Fox News's top-rated hits...

Translation: The three MSM networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) together draw exponentially more viewers than Fox.

Duh???

What do you expect when the three MSM networks have been broadcasting FREE (i.e., subsidized by the taxpayers) for the last 50 years, competing with a pay cable network????

Another indication that Rich and the MSM are going down!!!!!

[mcenedo]

On right-wing sites like freerepublic.com Mr. Sites was branded an "anti-war activist" (which he is not), a traitor and an "enemy combatant."

Thanks for the plug!!!

[beezdotcom]

What a crock:

Though it may come as news to those running NBC, we actually live in a red-and-blue-state country, in a world that increasingly hates all our states without regard to our provincial obsession with their hues

The world only hates our Red states. France and the UN absolutely love the blue states, and OBL/UBL (pick your spelling) only threatened the red states, NOT the blue states.

[magellan]

What a hissy fit.

[Garvin]

Since blogging doesn't generate big (if any) profits, there's no budget for its "citizen reporters" to reliably blanket catastrophic and far-flung breaking news. = No manipulation of the news.
(There are no bloggers among the 36 journalists thus far killed in the Iraq war.)= No just Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who have written blogs and first hand account stories from behind a weapons of war not a camera, also by being the story not trying to make a story.

[RKBA Democrat]

Giving the devil his due, he does make one interesting point: often times bloggers are responding to the MSM rather than generating their own content.

I find it ironic that we in the new media are more often than not spending our time responding to the latest MSM stupidity. We complain about the usual gang of suspects; the NY Times, ABCNNBCBS, ad nauseum. But in the next breath, we post yet another one of their slanted stories or op-eds thus giving MSM propaganda more circulation than it would otherwise have.

I think there is value in providing an outlet for commentary on the MSM's propaganda. I just hope that over time, we in the new media become the content generators. The MSM will not change or go away until they are rendered irrelevant. So long as they are one of the primary generators of content, that just isn't going to happen.

[litehaus]

WADAJOKE Rich is.......the joke that keeps all America laughing.......and he never will "get it."

[Captiva]

On right wing sites like freerepublic.com Mr. Sites was branded an "anti-war activist" (which he is not), a traitor and an "enemy combatant."

VRWC props!