Total, epic, media FAIL on Iran
Mon, Jun 15, 2009
Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember media coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tianenmen Square, both of which I observed from the US, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which I watched live on the BBC while living in London. At the time, media were unencumbered by competition from the internet, tied into the Cold War narrative, and pushing the envelope of what was possible with cable news.
Editors certainly recognized what they were seeing, and made decisions about coverage accordingly. Coverage of those events was constant, hitting saturation point immediately, and stayed there for days. Media executives seemed to understand the history unfolding before their eyes, and took it as their responsibility to be eyes and ears not just for their audiences, but for the people in the crosshairs.
No obstacle was enough to stop the coverage. Even when China cut off CNN from Beijing, CNN reported repeatedly that they were cut off. BECAUSE IT IS NEWS WHEN A NEWS ORGANIZATION IS SHUT DOWN. When tanks hit the streets in Moscow in 1991, cameras were there, regardless of safety concerns, in one of the most closed societies on earth at the time, as the outcome was in grave doubt. Reporters risked their lives.
Today, as global geopolitics is shaken to its core by events in Iran, I turned on cable news this morning, and saw endless ads for a Larry King Jonas Brothers “interview”, Morning Joe yukking it up discussing Kuwaiti massage therapists, a video of a tomato throwing contest on CNN, talk radio blowhard Bill Bennett…and occasionally a phone call from Christiane Amanpour in Tehran. I can’t even bring myself to turn on the network morning programs, I might vomit.
All the while, I have been hitting refresh like a crazy person on this thread at Huffington Post, which reports on news organizations banned, reporters arrested, crowds building for a Mousavi rally as I post this, etc. etc. Huffington Post has no reporter on the ground, no international bureau, no satellite phones in Tehran, and yet, that is the most thorough news source on this story you can find.
I suppose, in fact, pray to GOD, this will turn around at some point, but as of this moment, I cannot think of a bigger failure of our media culture in my lifetime. Not only is there limited coverage, it appears editors don’t even recognize what they are seeing before their eyes.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:44 am
“Not only is there limited coverage, it appears editors don’t even recognize what they are seeing before their eyes.”
This is it. This goes beyond any sort of specific bad editorial decisionmaking. New organizations (most, not all) do not see what is right in front of them and seem to be tone deaf and paralyzed in a way that is inexplicable. It is impossible to even reason through any sort of biases or conflicts of interest that might be getting in the way. I don´t get it. I just want these irresponsible and incompetent networks and papers to get shut down so that those interested in doing actual journalism will be able to move into the vaccuum.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:30 am
CNN interviews Christiane Amanpour and Hedi Collins asks the same stupid question “Is Mousavi at the rally?” TWICE, forcing Amanpour to REPEAT what she just said.
And why does CNN have cameras on two flatscrren monitors showing YouTube clips of what’s going on in Iran – don’t they have the ability to show the clips themselves?
And Hedi Collin’s first question to Trita Parsi is president and founder of the National Iranian American Counci? “Who do you think won the election?”
Lastly, just now, Collins reports that after the break, CNN will report on how Twitter is “playing a role” in the reporting of the events in Iran. Playing a role? What a joke.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Neocon AIPAC using Iran election to push for WAR.
Our propaganda media is dumbstruck.
Federal Reserve and 911;
Liars and Truthers.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:57 am
It makes me want to cry. We are letting these guys down.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:18 am
I totally agree. Great article. The lack of adequate coverage in the broadcast media has been astonishing.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I’d also like to echo what b1gon said. We ARE letting these folks down. They need to know we care – and most people do — but it’s hard for people to care when they’re not informed on what’s going on over there. It starts with the media. Unfortunately, stories about Miss California and beauty pageants seem to get more of the MSM’s attention.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am
It’s like the Hurricane Katrina of the media. People are DYING in the superdome and they’re telling brownie that he’s doing a heckuva job.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:55 am
What can you say, all the CNN reporters that actually covered Tiananmen have retired by now. In fact all the reporters in the Gulf war have retired except Armanpour. CNN sent the fewest reporters to Iraq instead, relying on that 1 guy Michael Wier who was too interested in bashing Bush to notice a single story around him.
We can expect Anderson Cooper to showup six months from now at the DMZ to cover the North Korea situation; he’ll never goto Iran, Iraq or Gaza. You can’t find real Prada there.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I too have been refreshing the Huffington Post feed every few minutes, along with the liveblog by Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic. But your attacks on the MSM are quite inaccurate. The cable news people do not report rumors, they report facts. Without the ability to verify what they hear online (from the twitter feed or from the aforementioned liveblogs) they cannot rightfully report it.
Also, why are you complaining about commercials? Do you expect them to report the news during commercials as well?
Don’t forget that, for most of the U.S., this is some foreign country that we don’t really care about. Every days there are clashes and protests and violence in that region, after a while we become apathetic to it.
P.S. Here is a link to the daily dish liveblog if you haven’t seen it, its got alot of information there as well: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/
June 15th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
For about ten minutes in the wee hours of this morning, CNN finally decided to switch over to their CNN-I feed. It was pretty thrilling, getting real news live! I’d almost forgotten what that felt like.
Then, for no particular reason, they decided to show, for what felt like the 10th time, Larry King’s September 2008 interview with Ahmedinijad. Listening to Larry ask him what he thought about Sarah Palin pretty much solidified for me the absolute absurdity of our high-school media.
It’s been shameful, it really has.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
“The cable news people do not report rumors, they report facts. Without the ability to verify what they hear online (from the twitter feed or from the aforementioned liveblogs) they cannot rightfully report it.”
What they hear online? It sounds like you’ve given up. Twitter and YouTube are the only sources left for the limp, useless television news media now that they’ve finished replacing all the real journalists with pundits and talking heads, right? We can’t expect them to send Rick Sanchez to Tehran to LEARN THE FACTS AND REPORT THE NEWS FIRSTHAND when he’s busy covering all the congressional bickering and fruit competition here at home.
What a pathetic joke.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
As Howard Kurtz of CNN said in this Newsy.com report via Twitter, CNN at least had a reporter in Iran and was broadcasting from the country. Fox and MSNBC had a ghost presence!
http://www.newsy.com/videos/cnn_out_twitted_on_iran
June 16th, 2009 at 1:46 am
When I happened upon CNN this afternoon, Campbell Brown had *two* people analyzing the latest apology from David Letterman over the Palin flap. Is that really the most important thing going on today? Egads.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
the major media outlets are uncertain what news to report out of Iran because the White House has not told them what to report.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Great article. I can’t believe the state of mainstream media today. This is history in the making and the corporate news entities are treating it like it the normal fodder that they spew every day. And I second the notion that we are letting the Iranian people down, because we are. I have to throw my hands up in the air, thoroughly giving up on mainstream media from this point on.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:18 am
It’s so cute to read about the author complaining about the failure of the media ten days BEFORE Michael Jackson died.