May 16, 2004

Feeding the Beast

I currently have great sympathy for the difficulty of hitting your entertainment/news writing goals (being in major writer's block territory). So when I read the following, my interest spiked:


So who's right?

Well, nobody, really: If you look closely, you'll see that neither the Globe nor NBC provide much evidence to support their contentions. But the contradictory stories ran regardless -- the proverbial beast must be fed, after all, even if it's got nothing to eat but gristle and stale crackers.


The story goes on to examine two uninspired stories about John Kerry's presidential campaign in further detail. It unfortunately misses the point. There are people being tortured in Uzbekistan, people are profoundly ignorant about oil supplies and how higher oil prices will make worldwide oil reserves grow tremendously, we are on the verge of a new era in space as private groups enter the space club, there are a thousand interesting stories that could have gone to fill the maw of the beast and then, horrors, when there is actual news to report about the presidential race, everybody could go out and report it.

Maybe, we might get through this very long campaign season without utterly loathing the political process because we're incessantly beaten over the head with uninteresting, uninspired, unimportant "news" just to fill time.

It's a big world out there. Why must people walk in lockstep in their reporting? There is no reason beyond a horribly unproductive, inbreed media culture.

Posted by TMLutas at May 16, 2004 09:40 PM