Sunday, June 13, 2010

Regarding My Thoughts on the BP Oil Spill, Fareed Zakaria Expressed My Sentiments Almost Perfectly

Words like tiresome, misguided, silly and such have come to mind as I've watched or read the reactions to Obama's actions (and inaction) during this crisis. But Fareed Zakaria essentially nailed it, in terms of my thoughts on the media's coverage.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, Fareed is a journalist actually talking about the issues. Not the non-issues and bright shiny objects thrown out there to clutter and distract.

Could it be time to start classifying "journalists" as
"Genuine Media" (such as Mr. Zakaria, Judy Woodruff, Carol Marin, and Rachel Maddow), "Independent Media" (bloggers), "Agenda Puppets" (Fox News, and some bloggers), and finally, "Infotainers" (Mrs. Palin)?

Wouldn't that, like ratings of motion pictures, help us sort through and filter which we view, an how seriously we take what each has to say.

Credentialing is pervasive in so many fields. Perhaps all these voices isn't the problem, but simply knowing which voices are credible, and which are aural junk mail.

I'm just sayin'...

Anonymous said...

I'm impressed, actually-- and agree with ol' Anon here. Journalists should talk about 'the issues.'

You can see my own thoughts on the BP oil spill here here.

hscfree said...

@Anon: I totally agree with the idea of classifying/rating the journalistic reliability of those who claim to provide us news.

@Shutitoff: I think that journalists should talk about "the issues" within their proper contexts. I think that it is wrong to talk about the issue of Wall Street thievery without understanding how Wall Street got there. That doesn't happen enough in media.

I also agree with many of the points you raised about the PR mess that PB is making of all of this. But I don't envy its PR staff, because as the weeks go by we learn more and more about the nastiest aspects of how BP has been run, with profit as the single driving force (which is understandable up to a point).