Sunday, Jun 30th
Last update07:49:10 AM GMT
Journalism Glance
France's broadcast authority has banned French channels from marketing TV shows to children under 3 years old, to shield them from developmental risks it says television viewing poses at that age.
The ruling also ordered warning messages for parents on foreign baby channels that are broadcast in France - such as Baby TV, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and BabyFirstTV, which has ties to News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment.
TVNL Comment: Can you say "indoctrination?"
The media stopped reporting news long ago and now reports on what many in this country want. Dirt, gossip, salacious details about who is sleeping with whom, who is the father of each new baby born out of wedlock or whether Britney is wearing underwear.
In America there is a growing hunger for the lowest level of human depravity that can be found. Jerry Springer and Maury Povich should bring tears to every viewer's eyes, yet they evoke laughter as the viewer is entertained by the pain and sickness of the weakest among us. It has reached staggering proportions, and there is no end in sight as to just how far the media conglomerates will go to dredge up the filth they package as news.
The in-depth new Pew News Consumption Survey (see our three other article), among many other things, gave respondents a three-question current events test. The results showed, for example, that viewers of certain "fake news" shows (Stewart, Colbert) performed better than those who favor many "real news" programs (such as Dobbs, O'Reilly). But what about the overall test scores for all viewers/readers?
Only 53% correctly identified the Democrats as being in control of Congress, with 15% picking the GOP-- and 32% not even able to venture a guess.
They did even worse when asked to name our current, longtime (and quite famous) Secretary of State. Only 43% named Condi Rice, 3% IDed someone else -- and an amazing 55% could not even take a shot at it.
And how many could name the new British prime minister? Merely 28% named Gordon Brown -- and guess who finished second with 5%? Rupert Murdoch. Another 4% were sure it was Robert Gates.
Only 18% correctly answered all 3 questions.
TVNL Comment: They are not "sadly uninformed", they are "intentionally misinformed!"
The Truth about Georgia gets censored again on TV. A reporter makes a comparison to the US reaction to 911 to Russia's reaction to Georgian attacks and the satellite feed drops off in the middle of his question. TV is censored every day and every hour but sometimes the censorship is plain to see.
Also today, The Times came clean on having referred to Senator McCain as a Vietnam-era "fighter pilot" when in fact he was shot down while at the controls of an A-4 Skyhawk - technically an attack aircraft rather than a fighter.
As almost everyone knows by now, various major daily newspaper published, on July 10, a photograph of four Iranian missiles streaking heavenward; then Little Green Footballs (significantly, a blog and not a daily newspaper) provided evidence that the photograph had been faked.
And if they are evidence, don’t we have to know that the evidence is reliable, that it can be trusted?
For years it has been a joke that news in the United States is terrible: obsessed with trivia and celebrity; fronted by Botox bimbos; forever interviewing citizens about some artefact of small-town life when a major news story is breaking elsewhere.
It's not the absolute dearth of real news that is the problem, however. It's the fact that the news that is presented isn't news but mindless, misleading gossip.
So where do you get your news while living in the US? News-starved Americans usually hold up National Public Radio, NPR, as the best option. But with interlude music fresh from the 1920s and a twee, kitchen-table-chat approach, this is news wrapped in a tea cosy.
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