As I mentioned earlier today, people are disenchanted with the print media, as evidenced by declining circulation and dwindling dailies. Exact reasons are just a guess, but mine is most people are simply unwilling to read. They view it as a task - something they had to do in school.
They'd much rather slouch on recliners, and have their news spoon fed to them by smiling and increasingly sexy anchors. That's why network executives think nothing of air-brushing Katie Couric's promotional photo to make her look twenty pounds lighter. And Couric jokes at this misrepresentation, damaging her credibility as a news anchor before she gets started.
I believe it waw reported that she asked them to do it.
ReplyDeleteReally? The article I linked on my post indicates Couric actually was unaware of the air-brushing, and so were CBS news execs. They tried to laugh it off, but it raises the disturbing question whether TV News is becoming just another sitcom.
ReplyDeleteYep, Mad Batter. Now there's a story!
ReplyDeleteTwo comments: Katie Couric had blood dripping from her jowels within a week of 9-11 eagerly anticipating Bush's revenge. She could hardly wait. Naturally, no analysis whatever. The perps woke up one day, stretched, yawned, had a good breakfast, were happy and contented with U. S. international mischief of the past 100 years or more, and decided to take out 3000 people and several building structures in the land of the Dairy Queen and Big Boy Hamburger.
ReplyDeleteThere are more than two papers in the Lehigh Valley. If the Easton News can ever get a reliable distribution person, it just might run the Big Two some competition.
Two comments: Katie Couric had blood dripping from her jowels within a week of 9-11 eagerly anticipating Bush's revenge. She could hardly wait. Naturally, no analysis whatever. The perps woke up one day, stretched, yawned, had a good breakfast, were happy and contented with U. S. international mischief of the past 100 years or more, and decided to take out 3000 people and several building structures in the land of the Dairy Queen and Big Boy Hamburger.
ReplyDeleteThere are more than two papers in the Lehigh Valley. If the Easton News can ever get a reliable distribution person, it just might run the Big Two some competition.
The Easton News is a weekly. It's also the Bethlehem News. Apparently, the Inquirer decided to start a weekly up this way, and has weekly papers for different school districts. I shoiuld have mentioned this outfit, but it does confuuse the hell out of me
ReplyDeleteI've got 3 problems with it. 1) In ads on WGPA AM, I hear it touted as being locally owned, but I think it's owned by the Philly Inquirer. I don't know this for sure. 2) I don't like the way it has different names for each school district, but essentially remains the samer paper. Isn't that a bit deceptive?
In fact, I think I'll ask them those questions next week.
yeah, i wrote about this too...amazing they'd be so blatant about it. At least do it on a NEW picture so people can't track back.
ReplyDeleteWhat's unfortunate is that she is a bright person who can be devastating in an interview. And she's a woman. But she seems to have gone down the fluff route. When people don't take her seriously or say she has no "gravitas," it ain't because she's female. It's the path she has chosen.
ReplyDeleteBernie,
ReplyDeleteI refer you to the article in today's edition of The New York Times, "At 2-Year Colleges, Students Eager But Unprepared."
The article confirms your observation in your post that too many Americans simply don't read - and for the simple reason that many can't: They're illiterate.
That's why here in the mystical, and mythical, "Lehigh Valley," we taxpayers have to subsidize nonprofits like ProJeCt of Easton to teach illiterates how to read and write.
These, of course, are skills that students should have mastered in elementary and high school but didn't.
How is the dean of the Fowler Family campus of NCC in South Bethlehem, Paul Pierpoint, going to train students for well-paying, high-tech jobs when they can't even read?
Many of these students won't even be able to get jobs as croupiers, blackjack dealers, or even valet parking attendants and bus boys at the BethWorks Las Vegas Sands Casino.
Yet PA Governor Ed "Fast Eddie" Rendell and the state legislature - and the U.S. Department of Commerce - are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on "transfer technology" under the Keystone Innovation Zone (KIZ), or what I've dubbed the "Kizz my Azz" zone.
Kizz my Azz is already up and running at the NCC Fowler Family campus, Lehigh University, and Lafayete and Franklin and Marshall colleges.
Billy, Thank you for your very well-written and, sadly, illuminating post. Would that it were not so, but most of us stopped reading long ago.
ReplyDeleteDid you happen to see Abc "News'" presentation of "the last days?"
ReplyDeleteand does the question "is tv news becoming a sitcom REALLY need to be asked?"
ReplyDeleteRach, Instead of stopping reading, I stopped watching TV about 5 yrs ago. So I didn't see the ABC show you mention. Thanks for your comments.
ReplyDeleteHigh School age pee-pullz don't have to be able to read to make $ on the street.
ReplyDeleteBilly already know that.
Mindless ad hominem attacks. Very good.
ReplyDelete