Recently I've been collecting misinformation, partiality and out-right lies from various media outlets, namely television news broadcasts. Point, there are biases in news reporting. In fact I dispute that there is any way not to report according to a given point of view: the Heisenberg Effect being my reference here. But there are also errors which make for humorous commentary.
My observation of media bias finally drove me to write about things I've seen and heard. I'll begin with June 6, 2010 and CNN. On DDay I was unable to find any mention of the importance of the date in our local newspaper. No kidding, not a word! Later in the day I began watching CNN at 6 in the evening- to be honest 6:30. From 6:30 to 7:00 CNN did a piece on Black-Jewish dialogues followed by a piece on Lebron James. Perhaps I missed the tribute to DDay that CNN showed. Perhaps there wasn't one. Still, CNN should have dedicated more time to this most important day in our nation's history.
On the day that President Obama first visited Louisiana to assess the damage done by the BP oil spill, Fox News made comments that 300 workers had been hired, albeit off the street, to make the President's visit a photo-op. Asinine! The three hundred individuals on the beach were most likely Navy Seals or some other elite branch of the military. It would be ludicrous to send the President of the United States to a beach with 300 people who have had no security check. Shame on Fox for claiming that the President's visit was merely a photo-op, staged with complete strangers.
Several nights ago while watching Chris Matthews on CNBC , I was appalled. Mr. Matthews was blathering on and on about James Bond- I didn't catch the beginning of the piece. Matthews
blithely said (and I paraphrase here), "We all loved the James Bond books when we were kids. I read all of them." Now, Matthews may have been alluding to the works of Ian Fleming but his phrasing made it sound as though James Bond was the author. Shame on Matthews for disseminating what could be misconstrued as false information.
But it gets better, or worse:
Fox is not immune to idiotic comments. On Friday, July 2,2010, Doocey the younger was reporting on a huge American flag which is hung on the Brooklyn Bridge. After blathering on and on about the size of the stars (3 feet in diameter) and the stripes (five feet tall) Doocey referred to the American flag as the "Stars and Bars." No kidding- I nearly catapulted out of my seat. Just how dumb does a TV commentator have to be to mistakenly refer to the American flag as the Stars and Bars and not the Stars and Stripes. For Mr. Doocey's benefit and many others who do not know the difference, The Stars and Bars was the flag of the Confederacy.
Who are these reporters and where were they educated?
But here comes a true favorite. Recently our local television station ran a scroll regarding students from the Arts High School. The scroll said-and I got this verbatim-that the students would be going to Carnage Hall in New York. Carnage Hall! Obviously the person who wrote the scroll didn't know what carnage meant, had never heard of Andrew Carnegie and was completely oblivious to the error. By early the next morning, someone had edited the mistake.
Tonight one of the most mispronounced words in the English language caught my ear. Every time I hear this word mispronounced I want to grab the speaker and shake him. The word is cavalry and it usually incorrectly pronounced calvary. The irony of this is that most people who make this error don't know the significance of the word they are saying . A few other people with as much free time as I have will recognize that Mt. Calvary is where Jesus was crucified. In other words those who incorrectly pronounce cavalry, calvary need to be corrected and quickly, especially if they claim to be Christians. Or, perhaps they believe the calvary crucified Jesus on Mt. Cavalry.
People- the open area between two roads is not a medium- it's a median.
Finally and this one goes back to a radio broadcast about a famous rock and roll singer who was found dead of gunshot wounds in his family room. Ouch. You got to love those misplaced modifiers.
Please forgive any typos or other errors I may have made.
Lem
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