Two posts ago I wrote that something like The Real news is quite unique in the U.S.’s completely broken media.
Today I found an interesting double interview on AlJazeeraEnglish by Riz Khan titled Has the mainstream media in the US replaced serious coverage with “junk news” and tabloidism?
FYI, you can see the one of the journalists featured in the clip, Amy Goodman, each weekday, on Democracy Now!, which can be viewed here:
http://www.democracynow.org/
“Has the mainstream media in the US replaced serious coverage with “junk news” and tabloidism?”
Headlines with a question mark is a typical tabloid technique. It allows any nonsense in the headline. The question in the headline is never answered in the article below it. A good estimate of the quality of journalism in a newspaper is the number of question marks on the front page.
@Jos: This simply is the format of the show that Riz Khan does on AlJazeera. He opens with a question and allows people to think about answers to that question.
He basically starts the show with “Today we ask”, around 1 minute in the show. And then there’s a debate between two experts, meanwhile are viewers and listeners encouraged to send comments to an E-mail address.
Even in the very first second of the video you see the words “questions & answers” going over the screen. This already should have illustrated to you the format.
If you would have clicked “play” you would have noticed this, of course. But then again, this is “the new style” of having an opinion: have an opinion on something you just didn’t see. I guess. *sigh*
@anon: Thanks for the link, I’ll bookmark it. Her point of view was often very interesting indeed.
Media consolidation happens in every closing society. Google “friendly fascism”.
Amy Goodman seems to try hard, but she is super confused. We don’t need more democracy, we need more LIBERTY.
“We don’t need more democracy, we need more LIBERTY. ”
(Hmm, I thought people were clamoring for more “open source” as opposed to more “freedom”…nevermind.)
But seriously, Amy Goodman is a journalist and the news show she co-presents is one of the few broadcasts from the US that are not corporate-sponsored. There are interviews with all sorts of people, people that just are not seen much elsewhere. I think it’s better to judge by the content of the program rather than by its name…
Another interesting alternative news source is GRITtv:
http://grittv.blip.tv/
http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/
It’s viewer-supported.
@Jay: No disagreement here. I for example question the virtue of democracy when the majority of the people who get a vote are willingly ignorant. When ignorance is bliss.
If you narrow “mainstream media” to “television media”, I agree wholeheartedly. But if you include papers and large websites in the conversation, I’m not so sure. There’s a shit ton of serious coverage in the print/internet world.
OMG, and you consider Al-jazeera a “serious medium”… :-o
@xurfa: No I don’t, I merely point out that this particular interview is interesting.