August 24, 2004
Does he read Rhetorica? :-) …
The best source of on-point commentary about press coverage of the presidential election is The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. On last night’s program, Senior Political Analyst Rob Corddry demonstrated why the press should act as custodians of fact. That this seems so obvious (and funny) to Comedy Central (and bloggers such as Bob Somerby) is another bit of evidence that the culture wants something more from journalism than he-said, she-said reporting.
Posted by acline | August 24, 2004 | Posted in: Main |
Uncanny: I saw that piece and thought of you.
George… I guess that means I’m staying on message
For the TV-challenged (aka too cheap to pay for cable), is there a site somewhere that describes the skits?
and - to generalize -
someone should start a blog on “blog volunteer opportunities” - suggestions for things that people with time on their hands could do to enrich the info content of the web.
Anna - my guess is that many Rashomon-like descriptions of Kerry’s appearance on The Daily Show will appear in the blogosphere tomorrow. Also, if you read the right blogs, they take care of the fact-checking (or “info content”) for you - one of the many advantages of blogs over MSM. Mainstream media seem to have an aversion to research and fact-checking. They seem to think the he said-she said angle is sufficient.
Anna - I had another thought (ouch! my brain hurts). Since I don’t know you, I wouldn’t want to suggest specific blogs. If your politics are center-left-far left, I suggest Dr. Cline’s blogroll. But a site I have found useful is memeorandum. They post the most linked stories of the hour, and also link to blogs which comment on those stories. The bloggers range from far left (Atrios, Kos, TPM) to far right (The Corner, John Hawkins) and everything in between. I’ll provide a link here (if I don’t screw it up) and if you check it tomorrow, you’ll find many posts on the Kerry appearance on TDS, plus the whole range of blogger input. For the record, I don’t have cable either - this is not due to “cheapness”, but to the fact that I have a 14 year old son who swears he will only watch the Discovery Channel, when I know he will only want to watch WWF Smackdown!
Here’s the link (if I’m lucky!). http://www.memeorandum.com/
Anna,
This (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/8/25/24946/4425) diary at DKos has a transcript of the segment in question, but I don’t vouch for its accuracy. It’s the last bit he lists.
The bit with Dr. Cline footnoted is when Rob Corddry says “I’m a reporter. My job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says and half the time repeating the other side.” Or perhaps when he says “Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.”
When I got the Comedy Channel, I always felt I was missing about a third of the Daily Show jokes, because I don’t watch the real TV news it satirizes. But it didn’t seem worth watching the real shows so I got the fake one.
,
-V.
BTW, what looks to be the full transcript is here:
http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_082704_balance.html
Sorry, I am an idiot - the above page only quotes a little bit from the episode.