No Small Measure of Self-Esteem
If the LA Times had elbows, they'd be sore from all the self-congratulatory back-patting in today's Calendar section.
Leading off is this piece, subtitled "By bringing the devastation and human loss of Hurricane Katrina into the nation's homes, television journalists are reviving their image." Really? Because along with the compassion and the courage, for my money, there's been a significant amount of self-righteous indignation on the part of the press -- a completely unearned indulgence. A prime example is this completely inappropriate behavior on the part of Anderson Cooper, as well as some of the histrionics displayed over the past week by the execrable Jack Cafferty.
The emotion displayed by many in the press over the past several days is an understandable and very human response to the desperate suffering they witnessed. But it seems to me that a little more humility and a little less self-righteous foot stomping and fist shaking are appropriate on the part of those who bear no responsibility for actually fixing the situation but who are merely chronicling it.
Also today there is this piece by Tim Rutten (my earlier thoughts on him here). His piece is titled "A Warning Sent but Left Unheeded" -- pointing to NPR and Times-Picayune pieces predicting serious trouble if New Orleans' levees weren't upgraded.
Certainly, some pieces seem prescient in retrospect. But the fact is that there are many stories discussing many threats of many kinds (from bioterrorism to the avian flu) for which we are likewise unprepared. Given the universe of "potential threat" stories in the MSM, it doesn't seem to me to be a significant achievement that one of the "potential threats" identified actually materialized. Now, if the MSM could tell us which threats would matter -- and when -- well, that would be something.
Finally, the self-congratulation seems just a bit, shall we say, "selective" when one considers that the MSM's premier icon -- The New York Times -- was actually decrying the money the Bush administration was appropriating for flood control measures as pork. (HT: Poor and Stupid via comment to this post below.)
Leading off is this piece, subtitled "By bringing the devastation and human loss of Hurricane Katrina into the nation's homes, television journalists are reviving their image." Really? Because along with the compassion and the courage, for my money, there's been a significant amount of self-righteous indignation on the part of the press -- a completely unearned indulgence. A prime example is this completely inappropriate behavior on the part of Anderson Cooper, as well as some of the histrionics displayed over the past week by the execrable Jack Cafferty.
The emotion displayed by many in the press over the past several days is an understandable and very human response to the desperate suffering they witnessed. But it seems to me that a little more humility and a little less self-righteous foot stomping and fist shaking are appropriate on the part of those who bear no responsibility for actually fixing the situation but who are merely chronicling it.
Also today there is this piece by Tim Rutten (my earlier thoughts on him here). His piece is titled "A Warning Sent but Left Unheeded" -- pointing to NPR and Times-Picayune pieces predicting serious trouble if New Orleans' levees weren't upgraded.
Certainly, some pieces seem prescient in retrospect. But the fact is that there are many stories discussing many threats of many kinds (from bioterrorism to the avian flu) for which we are likewise unprepared. Given the universe of "potential threat" stories in the MSM, it doesn't seem to me to be a significant achievement that one of the "potential threats" identified actually materialized. Now, if the MSM could tell us which threats would matter -- and when -- well, that would be something.
Finally, the self-congratulation seems just a bit, shall we say, "selective" when one considers that the MSM's premier icon -- The New York Times -- was actually decrying the money the Bush administration was appropriating for flood control measures as pork. (HT: Poor and Stupid via comment to this post below.)
posted by LadybugUSA at 3:37 PM
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