Posted on 06/02/2009 11:11:21 PM PDT by GOP_Raider
The world is about to end, or at least that’s according to ABC’s “Good Morning America.” The June 2 segment promoted a new special called “Earth 2100.” The program follows Lucy, a girl born in 2009, and her dramatic story about how if we don’t take drastic measures immediately climate change will cause droughts, floods, mass migration, and starvation.
This may sound straight from a science-fiction movie, but “Good Morning America” went to great lengths to assure viewers this wasn’t science fiction and that by airing this series they were changing journalism. Bob Woodruff, host of the special, called making up what will happen in the future “a different kind of journalism.” The segment quoted him saying, “not a prediction of what will happen, but what might happen.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Lip service to the Truth followed by a flood of abject mendacity.
Oh, don’t I wish?
I’d do unspeakable things for an X-Wing and an Artoo Unit.
I don't care what this clown calls it, I have a more accurate name for it: Yellow journalism:
Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that downplays legitimate news in favor of eye-catching headlines that sell more newspapers. It may feature exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists.
Actually I have several other names for it:
Wild guesses
Hysterical attention-getters.
Journalism undeserving of the word professional.
Propaganda.
Fiction.
But the above definition, Yellow Journalism, seems to cover the traditional disdain for the practice, and it is quite inclusive.
Those same unnamed 'experts' that they quote say that even if we enact the full monty for Kyoto it will only change their dire predictions slightly.
“When New York begins to flood, it will be total chaos.”
As if it's going to be a tsunami. It's supposedly a gradual increase in inches.... The surf fishermen on Long Island will have to back up a foot. Then in another 50 years, Wall Streeters will have to wear boots to work.
Of course in just 8 years there won't be a Wall Street and global warming will be the least of our worries. Although it will still be used as justification for the destruction of Capitalism.
Bump for later reading
“ABC’s Bob Woodruff called this “a different kind of journalism.” Um, yeah, Bob, it’s called propaganda.”
With respect, it’s called “fiction” (respect to GOP_Raider, not Woodruff).
More or less it’s what most of the ‘news shows’ have become due to their lack of ability, by choice, to report FACTS or the lack of them.
Why? COST. It costs less to produce pseudo news than to research and report actual news.
It’s appalling to watch news shows and have the ‘anchors/reporters’ have to fill in the report with inane chit chat and questions (before/lead, during and after).
If there wasn’t a political component involved here, I’d agree with you, but since there obviously is, I tend to agree with Raider’s assessment that it’s propaganda, and it’s probably timed gain whatever public support he can garner for his cap n’trade policy. It’s fear mongering at it’s finest.
Our character Lucy, named after an animal skeleton, has feet wonderfully adapted for athletic shoes. She can climb stairs in WaterWorld, New York almost as well as her pet lemur/monkey, Ida.
Ida shows certain human traits such as the ability to write scripts for morning television comedy shows.
Stay tuned...out.
“It’s fear mongering at it’s finest”
Which could be our agreement, but a difference in semantics?
These people actually believe what they propose and use whatever means possible to present their ideology (ref: the GM truck explosions that were rigged).
Fear mongering (or propaganda), is it not still fictional in its presentation?
I think they are so caught up in their need to present and be ‘factual’ (ne important) that they find the reasons to support their ‘reporting’. If you have time to watch, there is much ‘filler’ and a lack of the historic: who, what, when , where, why. (sorry, too much why without any facts)
And there is the need to fill the time alloted in each on air section... If you ever go to a news station site and read the article, it is a repeat of the on air verbage... no additional facts, scant as they be. It’s all scripted to fit into a given time slot.
(Again, I find scant actual reporting in most news reports, hence the rise in sites such as this)
I watched a two hour special many, many years ago about what we could expect in 2001. Unfortunately, 2001 came and went and we still don’t have a manned mission to Mars, a crazy, homicidal artificial intelligence named Dave, and Jupiter hasn’t been imploded into a second sun.
I’m very disappointed. I really wanted my own homicidal AI.
Sorry, I meant, “HAL”. :-)
...is it not still fictional in its presentation?
You betcha. I just think propaganda fits better considering the entanglement with politics :)
Is she going to even live that long after Ted Turner’s global warming canibals get to her?
“You betcha. I just think propaganda fits better considering the entanglement with politics :)”
Fair enough and we leave with a mutual hand shake.
It is by very definition Sci-Fi, as are all futuristic speculative works.
Has anybody factored known effects of plate tectonics into sea level projections? Variations in undersea trenches and mountain ranges, and release of more or less subterranean heat, are going to have some impact on the level and temperatures of water sitting thereon, no?
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