If you don't have cable or satellite, don't worry. You still are going to be able to watch Michael Jackson's funeral. Published reports indicate ABC, CBS, and NBC will all carry the services live Tuesday morning.
As I noted in an earlier post, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric broadcast live today from the the Staples Center, which will be the site of the funeral. Can you imagine Walter Cronkite doing the same? Maybe Dan Rather, but never Walter Cronkite.
While the CBS Evening News took 10 minutes to get to another story besides Jackson's death tonight, it waited until almost 20 minutes to even mention today was the deadliest day for U. S. soldiers in AFghanistan during the past year. It waited until nearly the end of the program to report on the death of Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara, and then limited the report to only one minute, completely eliminating any possibility of putting that death into context, and revealing the critical role McNamara played during a pivotal point in U. S history.
Unbelievably, after devoting only one minute to McNamara, and about the same amount of time to the historic arms agreement signed today between the U. S and Russia, CBS returned to the Jackson story to end its newscast.
And that final story was the only one that actually shed some insight into what was happening. Long time political reporter Jeff Greenfield, who deserves much better than this story, noted that one of the reasons why the Jackson story is so big and continues to get bigger, is the media.
We are telling the world that Michael Jackson's death is important, Greenfield pointed out. Sadly, Greenfield came across as the one voice of sanity in an ever-escalating orgy of media overkill.
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Earlier commentary- http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2009/07/jackson-coverage-indictment-of-our.html
It's like the media made a unanimous decision on the day he died: Now that he's dead, we'll love him and not call him a freaky self-hating black man who looks like a white woman!
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for CNN to sponsor the posthumous MJ funeral national stadium tour, complete with holy MJ relics for sale on the way out.
MICHAEL JACKSON WAS A ICON. THAT IS WHY HE IS GETTING THE COVERAGE.
ReplyDeleteYOUR JELOUS BECAUSE YOUR A LOCAL MISSOURI MAN WHO WILL NEVER REACH THE AUDIENCE JACKSON HAD.
PEDIFILE to the WORLD
ReplyDeleteOK after a week of non-stop MJ stories I'm about to go crazy! btw Randy did you catch the story KSN ran on how tired people are about the story? Thought you would like that one.
ReplyDeleteHow about "If Walter Cronkite WEREN'T..." Do I understand you teach English? Communication?
ReplyDeletetsk...tsk...tsk...
Jackson was truly a gifted entertainer and no doubt will continue to follow in the foot steps of Elvis--earning money and probably a lot of it. He certainly had character flaws. With that said, the main stream media has gone beserk. Most of the news is all show and no substance and perhaps that is a symptom of today's society--people would rather see pictures rather than actually hear and read of the world around them.
ReplyDeleteI have corrected the grammatical error. I have no excuse except it just slipped through.
ReplyDeleteYou know Randy, you do sound very jealous of Michael Jackson. I can't figure out why anyone would be jealous of a dead man. And you are doing exactly what you are complaining about the media. You are going on & on about it.
ReplyDeleteYou have a valid point about my continuing to write about Michael Jackson. As for the jealousy part, this is idiotic and you know it. I write about the media on a regular basis and when more attention is paid to the death of an entertainer, day after day, and when all of the networks shut down programming to cover his funeral, there is a problem with priorities Michael Jackson's death deserved coverage, that is undeniable, but to devote 24-hour coverage to Jackson, at a time when we are a fighting a war, when our president is involved in important talks in Russia, and when our nation is in an economic crisis is ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteSome guy named Bob McNamara also died. Had something to do with a war, I think it was in Southeast Iowa.
ReplyDeleteNewsflash: Michael Jackson is still dead.
Nice work, Randy. I am going to read your post to my students as we were discussing the news media in class just last night: which news outlets they trust, and why.
ReplyDeleteMany of the comments here are generally depressing, indicative of the problem with media and how it shapes priorities. The jealousy claims are particularly outrageous and illogical.
I am fairly certain that none of my freshman college students know who Robert McNamara was. If they watched this broadcast yesterday, they received the message that celebrities are more important than all else, including war. Our job as teachers is to help them see these messages and make reasoned decisions about what's important.
Can we have a democracy when the majority of the population lacks even the most basic information about world events?