News vs. Not News

11:26 pm EST November 19th, 2006 | Media | 10 Comments

It’s intriguing to me that a supposed news channel, CNN Headline News, spent millions to hype and produce a sensationalized program with right-winger Glenn Beck about how those evil A-rabs hate freedom (just months ago Beck was positive Iran was about to bring about the rapture and just within the week questioned whether a Muslim member of congress was a terrorist) while Discovery, a channel that is not a news channel per se had an excellent special with honest-to-goodness journalist Ted Koppel actually going to Iran and talking to every day Iranian people to see what the fuss on both sides of the world is all about. Koppel made the sin of practicing journalism in today’s world.

Since Discovery does a lot of repeats you should check out the Koppel special. Like us, there are human beings in Iran and all the bad and good that entails.

UPDATE: This is the stupid kind of shit crap I’m talking about. Why does con foreign policy always boil down to just stupidly killing people?

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10 Responses to “News vs. Not News”

  1. Dugger says:
    November 20, 2006 at 7:21 am

    Beck’s program may have been good or bad – didn’t watch it. But you are naive if you think going to a rigid, violent authoritarian religious state and ‘interviewing the average man on the street’ produces anything of value.

  2. Nimrod Gently says:
    November 20, 2006 at 8:59 am

    Mississippi?

  3. Rheinhard says:
    November 20, 2006 at 9:16 am

    Is it not more naive to simply say “This is a country whose government we dislike, therefore all its population are hate filled battle droids that are pointless to talk to to find out what they are really thinking”?

    I was away until Sunday night and didn’t catch Koppel, I hope they repeat it because he’s an experienced enough journalist that I’d trust his ability to detect when he’s getting the real deal from that “man on the street” and when he’s getting the line that the handlers want people to say.

  4. Sundown says:
    November 20, 2006 at 11:22 am

    Dugger,

    Fact is, of the authoritarian Moslem nations, Iran has the most pro-USA populace. You should find a new strawman.

  5. Oliver Willis says:
    November 20, 2006 at 11:41 am

    Unlike a lot of the reporters who blindly follow the White House, Koppel has a proven and excellent BS detector that he uses on both sides, and actually calls out people’s hypocrisy – both those who bemoan the “great satan” as well as those who push the theory of them evil a-rabs. Its called journalism.

  6. Tuco Ramirez the Rat says:
    November 20, 2006 at 2:04 pm

    Sundown,

    Fact is, of the authoritarian Moslem nations, Iran is the one where the Democrats’ foreign policy* calls for “killing people” under certain unspecified conditions:

      • Carrots are not enough:
        • Iran should be concerned that it has no realistic possibility of making its
          enrichment and reprocessing facilities operational.
        • Accordingly, Iran should understand the existential threat of a military
          response under some conditions.

        *page 61

      • william says:
        November 20, 2006 at 8:08 pm

        Maybe ‘ol Ted should go interview Ms Kamalfar who has been stranded in the Moscow airport for 73 days. She is guilty of being an Iranian who wants to live in a free country.

        Crap. Ted should go interview the UN crapweasels who turned down her petition for refugee status.

      • Oliver says:
        November 20, 2006 at 8:20 pm

        Yes, because clearly we must bomb Iran because it has a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. We don’t have that in America or anything.

      • Tuco Ramirez the Rat says:
        November 21, 2006 at 12:53 am

        Tell you what, Oliver. Why don’t you take a little trip to Iran, and come back and tell us how much like America it is.

        On second thought, don’t come….

      • William K. Wolfrum says:
        November 21, 2006 at 2:00 pm

        I understand Godwin’s Law and all, but I was wondering what it’s called when the warmongers are left with nothing to say but “America: Love it or leave it”

        Tuco’s Tirade, perhaps?

        –WKW