Ask Yourself Why

"Media Guy" has written an article, "The 10 Most Pathetic Media Meltdowns". Here are three of them, read the whole article here.

"The Slow, Painful Death of Network News"

"It was, in total, an astonishingly eventful year for network news -- and the vast majority of the news about the nation’s TV newscasters was unrelentingly bleak...both CBS’s and NBC’s news divisions seemed to be contemplating their own mortality, even as they got new chiefs tasked with punching up the ratings (hello, thankless jobs!)."

(And WHY was the year bleak for network news, do you think?)

"The Death of Big -- and Little -- Newspapers"

"In newspaperland, this was the year of complete and utter desperation (just ask the 85 victims of the recent downsizing at Tribune Co. papers)."

(Ah, would that be the journalists who have recently been fired from the LA Times news desk?)

"When Knight Ridder contemplated selling itself to placate restless shareholders, everybody wondered, “Who in their right mind would wanna buy a newspaper chain?” And if anyone was hoping for alternative papers to keep up the tradition of a feisty, inky press, the merger of Village Voice Media with the New Times chain extinguished that lingering glimmer."

(Or alternatively, WHO in their right mind would wanna buy feisty, inky fiction and more importantly WHY?)

So here's his example of some "news" that - well hey! - just blew everybody away this year - or would have if they weren't so busy not watching and not buying.

"First, there was that infamous shot of Bush surveying Katrina damage from the comfort and safety of his Air Force One seat -- the year’s worst photo op, which showed a remote, disconnected, powerless president doing ... nothing."

(I truly don't know what photo he's talking about here. The photo I enjoyed was a beautiful photoshop dream. If it's going to be made up, make up something great.)

"Then came his mortifying press-conference embrace of FEMA Director Michael Brown: “You’re doing a helluvajob, Brownie.” In the end, the hurricane not only devastated New Orleans, it wrenched the Bush administration’s creaky smoke-and-mirrors machine -- which would be further damaged by the endless war in Iraq and the hapless Harriet Miers nomination. The endgame? Bush’s spin doctors have been thrust into a seemingly permanent defensive crouch."

(This guy has got to cancel his subscription to the New York Times.)

Then he needs to ask himself WHY.