Posted on 03/29/2005 6:40:49 AM PST by Constitution Day
happy warrior
MARK STEYN According to Script
The other day, as their latest contribution to the death spiral of American journalism, the Associated Press announced that they would now be supplying newspapers across the country with alternative versions of important stories — in order, as they put it, to “enhance the value of the AP news report to your newspaper.”
“The concept is simple,” the AP explained in a memo to newspaper editors. “On major spot stories — especially when events happen early in the day — we will provide you with two versions to choose between. One will be the traditional ‘straight lead’ that leads with the main facts of what took place. The other will be the ‘optional,’ an alternative approach that attempts to draw in the reader through imagery, narrative devices, perspective or other creative means.”
Imagery, narrative devices . . . Who can argue with that? Big important second-semester creative-writing-course stuff. Can’t get enough of it myself. If I’d been more on the ball, I’d have opened this column with a bit of specific gripping imagery myself. (Note: If you’re reading the “enhanced value” version of “Happy Warrior” that runs in the Pocatello Times-Indicator-Courier-Union-Picayune-Whig-Leader, the gripping imagery may well have been inserted by the helpful editors.)
Anyway, the AP offered a sample of the alternative versions it would be providing. Here’s the traditional:
“MOSUL, Iraq (AP) A suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners Thursday, splattering blood and body parts over rows of overturned white plastic chairs. The attack, which killed 47 and wounded more than 100, came as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad said they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government.”
Here’s the optional:
“MOSUL, Iraq (AP) Yet again, almost as if scripted, a day of hope for a new, democratic Iraq turned into a day of tears as a bloody insurgent attack undercut a political step forward. On Thursday, just as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad were telling reporters that they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government, a suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent . . .” Etc.
Wow. “Day of hope” turning into “day of tears.” I haven’t seen that kind of sparkling prose since Barbra Streisand stood up at that big pre-Iraq Democratic-party gala and solemnly regaled the party bigshots with that Internet-hoax Julius Caesar soliloquy about the drums of war being whipped into the fever-pitch of a double-edged sword. Whoever wrote that should be manning the Fresh Vivid Imagery desk at the Associated Press.
But in the midst of that unreadable sludge of clichés, the AP’s desert bard came up with one unreadable sludgy cliché that gets the gist of their Iraq coverage better than anything: “almost as if scripted.” Isn’t that precisely the problem? It is pre-scripted. The good folk of Basra and Kirkuk don’t spring out of bed each morning saying, “Ah, another day of hope,” only to trudge off to dreamland 16 hours later wondering why yet again the day of hope turned into a day of tears, daring to sing yet another chorus of “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow” but knowing deep down chances are the Sunni’ll come out tomorrow and blow up the schoolhouse.
As we learned on election day in January, that doomy drivel is imposed on the Iraqi people by the media’s pre-scripters. And once the fellows holed up in the Green Zone hotels decided that the war was yet another Vietnam remake, everyone else got the hang of the formula pretty quickly. The old Baath-party translators the foreign press still use quickly learned to lead reporters by the nose to some whiny clerk from the Ministry of Fingernail Pullers and Genital Severers moaning about how he’d been laid off. The “insurgents” got the hang of staging their photo-ops on Eastern Standard Time, setting some secondhand Nissan alight each morning Baghdad time so that its plume of smoke could be conveniently filmed from the press-hotel balcony in time for The Today Show and Good Morning America. Days of hope turned into days of tears as regular as clockwork.
And in between their Bridges-of-Madison-County imagery and Horse-Whisperer narrative devices, the Western media somehow managed to lose the story — functioning municipal government in the south, booming tourism in the north, normality and progress in three-quarters of the country. The insurgent-of-the-day approach to Iraq didn’t even capture that element correctly: On the second anniversary of the invasion, Agence France-Presse ran a story remarkably like the AP’s hypothetical specimen. The headline: “45 Killed In Insurgent Attacks.”
The lead paragraph: “At least 45 people have been killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq as Washington defended its decision to go to war on the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.”
It took an Australian blogger, Arthur Chrenkoff, to poke deep down into the story and emerge with the most salient fact of this bloody toll — that of the 45 dead, 29 were “insurgents” themselves. Terrorism is supposed to be one guy indiscriminately killing large numbers of the other side. No terrorist network can survive long if it’s losing two of its own men for every one of the enemy. That’s the story: a day of hope turned into yet another day of tears — for the insurgents.
With a few honorable exceptions, Iraq coverage has been a truly spectacular failure. One day in the future, we’ll dig out the yellowing clips and wonder how America managed to lose every daily battle and yet still win the war.
bump
The best button on tv when the alphabet networks are on IS OFF. Gradually, gradually, liberalism crumbles and disappears with the likes of KKK Byrd, Swimmer Kennedy, and Miss America Pelosi. But there's still lots of work for us to do in balancing government. Judiciary has way too much power. Supreme Courts, federal and state, should be abolished. We don't need them to interpret the Constitution. We're quite capable ourselves. More local control!
You may be interested in reading this column.
Love Steyn bump!
Not quite correct, they offer two versions; neither of which are even remotely similar to competent and objective reporting.
Waiter: We have two menu choices, dog poop, or horse poop.
Customer: Yuck! I don't want either!
Waiter: But you have your choice you ingrate!
So true! The old-timey TV media simply can't compete wth 22 minutes of news a day, most of which is health news or anti-Bush/Republican material. Even the Spanish language stations talk about stuff from around the world.
The newspapers are no better. They protect their massive other assets and NEVER risk alienating ANY local boss. Here in Texas, Belo (Dallas Mourning News) will NEVER talk about the black thugs stealing the city blind as crime again makes it the murder capital of the country. To do so might alienate the next thug elected to whatever board who will order HIS minions to picket Belo's TV station or refuse to issue a permit to double the profit on an aging office complex.
Even CNN does a better job with the "news" than do the old=timey, non-competitive profit centers.
Sick humor, but funny still! Can't someone convince Styen to run for something?
The Associated press is like the very fat, ugly, girl.. who thinks the best way to attract guys is to wear a smaller bikini.
Geeze I hate the press.
But in the midst of that unreadable sludge of clichés, the AP’s desert bard came up with one unreadable sludgy cliché that gets the gist of their Iraq coverage better than anything: “almost as if scripted.” Isn’t that precisely the problem? It is pre-scripted. The good folk of Basra and Kirkuk don’t spring out of bed each morning saying, “Ah, another day of hope,” only to trudge off to dreamland 16 hours later wondering why yet again the day of hope turned into a day of tears, daring to sing yet another chorus of “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow” but knowing deep down chances are the Sunni’ll come out tomorrow and blow up the schoolhouse.
Okay, one is a painted lady, the other is a tattoed lady.....
The choice is whether or not to have a cherry on your turd.
My day is now complete. Thanks the for ping, Pokey!
I notice that there isn't a single numeric figure in the second story.
Two versions of a lie - a lie, and a flowery lie.
When we invaded Iraq in phase I of the Iraqi war, the doomer and gloomer posters on Free Republic loved to past AP and Reuters BS to discredit our troops.
Most of them eventually got banned, there are a few left. I used to tangle with these pushers of gloom and doom via the AP/Reuters bs. Their reason for posting the gloom and doom bs was that it was news. Of course they had voted for GW since he was 2 years old.
For more clarification where most of the AP so called reporters are coming from, do a search with their name with Gay added on Yahoo search. Often they have been pushing the Gay Agenda for years, hate GW and conservatives 24/7.
The most revealing search was on Tom Hays, the Ass. Plick, who lied about republicans cheering when GW announced that Clintoon had been admitted to the hospital.
Below is that search. Hays is an long time out of the closet gay, who pushed the Gay agenda. One of his lovers was on the flight crew of one of the planes that took out the Towers on 9/11.
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=Tom%20Hays%20Gay
I like the term "Suicide Murderer" better. Every bomber is a homocide bomber, but I think the term suicide murderer is more correctly descriptive.
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