A recession by any other name...

I was watching CNN the other day, and was surprised at how optimistic the coverage was. A correspondent was being interviewed about the price of gas, because the national average had just dropped below $2.00 a gallon. She raved that--when adjusted for inflation--that's how much we were paying for gas in the 1960s. She then extolled the viewers to go have fun, fun, fun in the T-Birds. The American public must be loving this drop in gas prices, she said, especially since the DOW Jones average was up 150 pts at that point. One phrase she said stuck out to me: "we earned it," referring to America as a whole deserving this lightening of the burden.

However, the burden was only lightened slightly. Although gas prices are down now, they will go back up, and however pleasant the DOW rise is, the nature of the market is that it will drop again. The silver lining of the recession is that it forces people to be more responsible, since many have been living beyond their means. This type of media coverage paints an overly rosy picture of the situation: times are lean, so fiscal responsibility is a good thing; we can't just point to a couple of positive blips on the national radar to celebrate and ignore the overwhelming burdens that dominate the larger picture. By calling for a celebration in our T-Birds, the correspondent made us feel better, but with unrepresentative 'evidence.' The media--especially television--play a tremendously large role in shaping how we interpret the world; if they say everything's alright, then people may be less conscientious in their behavior. It seems apparent that the cable news media were simply trying to make people feel good, to help them avoid experiencing anything unpleasant.No one wants their comfortable way of life disturbed. So let's go out and have a celebratory drive, because as the CNN corespondent said, "we earned it."

Liberal Media Bias?

It is often lamented that the mainstream media (MSM) has a liberal bias. Recently, examples from the coverage of the presidential campaigns were cited as proof: the generous (in amount and tone) coverage of Obama, and the less abundant and less favorable coverage of McCain and Palin. Some believers have put their suspicions into cartoon form:

While individual anchors and correspondants have their own opinions--whether overt or tacit--they are subjugated to the corporate beliefs. Here's a third cartoon to end with:

CNN thinks Palin spoof is funny

Wolf Blitzer appreciates Tina Fey's spoof of Sarah Palin:



This is not the only time that SNL lifted exact phrases from the politicians for the comedians' dialog. Other Sarah Palin lines from the VP debate were quoted exactly, as well as lines from the presidential candidates themselves.

What does it mean that the comedy shows are so closely aligned with the world of politics (including people getting their news from the Daily Show)? The ratings for the SNL episodes about the election were huge- on tv and on the internet. What does it mean that CNN and other cable news channels were covering--and apparently supporting--this type of comedic politics? Is comedy a legitimate source of political insights, or is it an insufficient or biased form of agenda-setting?

It's one thing for a comedy show to openly skewer the politicians, and another thing when the strait-laced cable news takes a side- even if done tacitly. Or is it all just done in fun?

"The greatest show TV has seen in years"

James Poniewozik writing about new election night technologies:
"Election night captured in miniature the brilliance and ridiculousness of election 2008 in the media. NBC painted an electoral map on New York City's Rockefeller Center skating rink and stood its hosts in front of enough virtual Greek columns to stage a hundred Obama rallies; 3-D graphics sprouted out of studio floors and hung in the air; and CNN unveiled the most amazing and goofy innovation, 3-D projections of studio guests speaking to the network's anchors like Princess Leia asking Obi-Wan for help in Star Wars."

SNL spoofs the giant digital election maps:


Entertained yet? Kind of makes you long for the simple days of Tim Russert and his whiteboard.

"Awash in data, if not necessarily in knowledge"

Much has been written about the 24-hour news cycle, and how it dilutes pertinent stories with less important but flashier stories. James Poniewozik, a writer for Time Magazine, recently wrote about the 24 minute news cycle. In other words, he believes that with cable and online outlets, any little thing can be made into news, to help fill the time and to satiate the the voracious appetites of some news consumers.

The phenomenon he describes is that the coverage we see is actually "fixations and miniscandals whipped up in the unsleeping" media. He believes that potential stories "percolate" in blogs and tabloids until the mainstream press finally pick them up to join in the conversation and in the process "soil" their white gloves.

Poniewozik illustrated his point with the recent election coverage as an example. He believes it was just a succession of these miniscandals, hyped because "the media run so fast while politics moves so slow."

Example 1: "While Hillary Clinton and Obama won their expected states with the precision of a German train schedule, the 24-minute news cycle played each victory as: Comeback! Counter-comeback! Counter-counter-comeback!"

Example 2: "The campaigns, meanwhile, also learned to use new media to keep the news monster appeased. Web ads were quick, cheap and explosive--the more outrageous, the more likely to get embedded on blogs and played for free on the news."

In the end, Poniewozik believes that the mainstream press has more competition for scoops and thus for audiences (from blogs, YouTube, etc), so they learned how to "put on a show," turning the 2008 election into the "biggest pop culture event of the year."