It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but it’s still worth noting that the cable news Japan coverage was especially bad:
In one taped segment (though apparently not initially intended for air), [Soledad O’Brien] gets word that they need to move out of the area she’s in. Then she panics and yells that a wave is coming and she starts running (all of this being filmed). By the time she reaches high ground in a nearby house, the camera looks out to see nothing but dry land as far as you can see.
Panic much? (Worse, you’d think CNN would burn that video, but no – it re-aired it). In studio, Piers Morgan was having a good show on Monday until – wait for it – he interviewed Yoko Ono about how she felt seeing the Japanese carnage.
I watched a bare minimum of Japan coverage on cable, and while I agree that Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta standing around on a roof in Tokyo was a waste of a live feed, Rachel Maddow, as usual, did a good job reporting from her studio.
Via TPM
cleek
i find it baffling that anyone here watches cable news.
R-Jud
Yes, because she’d taken the time to analyze information from various primary sources in order to present facts to her viewers in an organized way. Rather than just being able to say “I’m HERE, at the PLACE where STUFF IS HAPPENING!” and acting like that, in and of itself, is informative.
The whole “eyewitness” news thing winds up being pure voyeurism more often than not, especially on a 24/7 news channel where they have to kill lots of time. But you all knew this already.
P.S.: Ono, here we go, our life is just one big pun.
JPL
Life without cable is good. Bozo Boortz has been ranting about the media coverage focusing on the nuclear disaster and not the human suffering. Someone called in and mentioned that the fishing and agriculture industry within twenty miles was gone which would add to the human suffering. Boortz ignored the caller and talked about three mile island not having lasting effects. Twice a year I try to listen to Bozo for ten minutes or so because to do so more often would cause long term health effects.
cmorenc
Would you rather the video feed end with whichever one (camera person, O’Brien) was facing the Ocean yelling ‘HOLY CRA….” and then the camera being tossed to the ground, with images of water inundating it moments later before the camera shorts out from seawater? I recall that the difference in some people’s survival from the Tsunami was just a couple seconds head start, well before the wave actually came inland.
It doesn’t make O’Brien look good, for sure, to be caught on camera running in panic from what turned out to be a false alarm, or for CNN to keep it or Piers Morgan to stupidly repeat the footage. But she’s alive this morning, and Morgan is still a smooth-talking idiot (and perhaps so is she, but a still-alive one).
Jeff
Piers Morgan is uniquely bad. I’m having trouble imagining what demographic CNN execs thought they had nailed down by putting him in a primetime slot.
dr. bloor
Up next: Jessica Yellin asks George Takei why the Federation refuses to employ antigravitational beams to stabilize the Japanese coast and vacuum the radiation into deep space.
Alwhite
Hey! Anybody know what Charlie Sheen is up to these days?
Maybe we could get Charlie to interview Yoko – THAT would be a ratings bonanza! The modern media, lots of heat, lots of glitz not illumination.
LosGatosCA
@Jeff
The cable demographic, paranoid shut ins who have lost their remotes.
Napoleon
Kudos on the BNL reference. The best live band I have seen before Steven Page left.
Alwhite
@R-Jud:
Not to be difficult but I think you misspelled that. It not “eyewitness” its EYEWITLESS
Nicole
Heh: Barenaked Ladies: “You Can Be My Yoko Ono.” Dar Williams: “I Won’t Be Your Yoko Ono.” Fight! Fight!
Joey Maloney
@cmorenc: Would you rather the video feed end with whichever one (camera person, O’Brien) was facing the Ocean yelling ‘HOLY CRA….” and then the camera being tossed to the ground, with images of water inundating it moments later before the camera shorts out from seawater?
You have to ask? That would be EPIC.
Seriously, the point is not whether or not O’Brien reacted properly or not to what turned out to be a false alarm, the point is that it’s not newsworthy. This was a taped segment, not a live blooper. The fact that CNN aired it – repeatedly – is proof, as if any more were needed, that news judgement has little to do with their programming decisions.
Yay, edit function working again!
Boudica
Every time I’ve caught Piers Morgan’s show, he’s asking people who they would like to sleep with or other sex-related questions. Salacious much?
Comrade Javamanphil
@dr. bloor: Sadly, no. George Takei only gets to comment on stories about Gay Japanese people. You’d better check your approved minority spokespeople list and make sure you have the most recent one.
tBoy
Celebrity driven news, aka drivel. We dumped the TV and our primary news sources are now Al Jazeera & foreign public radio. Australia & New Zealand are particularly good.
Brandon
@Boudica: He is British after all. Benny Hill is probably their equivalent of Cronkite.
R-Jud
@Jeff:
I was astounded when I heard he was crossing the Atlantic, and floored when I heard he’d be taking over for Larry King, who looks like Edward R. Murrow in comparison. Morgan’s been primarily known over here as a judge on “Britain’s Got Talent” and “X-Factor”. You know, that guy Simon Cowell has sit next to him in order to make him look good.
@Alwhite: Nyuk nyuk nyuk.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Javamanphil: Isn’t Takei an American of Japanese ancestry? Do we go to Robert DeNiro for updates on Italy?
R-Jud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Lady Gaga. Or Lady Gaga dressed as Larry King. Which would probably be an improvement on Piers Morgan.
agrippa
It is difficult trying to ‘keep up’, with the state of news gathering being what it is. It was never very good ( When one comes, they all come; when one leaves, they all leave; but, it seems much worse today.
Medocrity is commonplace; and, not all reporters are above average.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Omnes Omnibus: If you are CNN you do!
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Yoko Ono was useless and irrelevant even when she was fucking John Lennon in front of a whole bunch of reporters, and has been ever since. I remember the night she appeared – I flipped to an infomercial instead.
I wonder what dumbass floated the idea that she’d be an interesting “take” on the tsunami, and which set of dumbasses signed off on it?
Eric S.
I haven’t watched cable news in a very long while. For whatever reason I flipped on CNN last week. Anderson Cooper was on the roof. It took me a minute to identify the irritating sound in the background. The first time I head it I thought the cat was into something. Then I realized what it was.
CNN had Geiger Counter sound effect in the background. That concluded my experimental return to cable news.
birthmarker
I watch a bare minimum of cable news. Period. Why bother? It’s not accurate.
Merely one recent example-the exaggeration of last summer’s oil spill and its effect on the Gulf Coast beaches. This trashed the rentals of property for hundreds of miles away, much of which was totally unaffected.
I know this because I was there, and have been there already this year. It is absolutely beautiful in north Florida right now. The property owners count on the rentals to help offset the expenses of the units. Not to mention the effect on the rest of the tourist economy.
Dennis SGMM
Cable news didn’t tempt me even when the earthquake and tsunami struck: the feeds and articles linked here were enough for my disaster threshold.
Ash Can
I never even considered what the cable stations were doing to be “coverage.” The only real English-language coverage going on, as I could see, was that done by the BBC and Al Jazeera, on line.
Some time ago here I posited that news reporting and dissemination in the US would deteriorate to the point where we’d have to rely on foreign news services to actually stay informed. I didn’t think we’d have reached that point this soon.
Comrade Javamanphil
“I never watch Cable News” is the Twenty-Teens (what the hell are we calling this decade?) equivalent of the 90s “I only buy Indie label music.” This is not a judgment, btw, just an observation.
Brandon
@Comrade Javamanphil: I think you got the analogy wrong. It’s the equivalent of “I only buy organic”. “I never listen to NPR” is the equivalent of “I shop at the farmers market” and “I only watch BBC/Al Jazeera/foreign broadcaster” is the equivalent of “I am a member of a CSA”.
gwangung
@Omnes Omnibus:
That makes him “uniquely qualified” for cable, you know.
TheMightyTrowel
Mistermix – from the depth of my hard little heart I thank you for the BNL headline… deep down under a pile of spider webs and dirty laundry I hide a great and abiding love for Barenaked Ladies – particularly anything off Gordon. :D
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis SGMM:
Yeah.
Seems like cable TV is what is making America really fucking stupid.
Eric U.
cable is only a reflection of what the Republican cable channel owners want the American public to be. It certainly works on a large number of people.
Suffern ACE
@gwangung: Since we turn to Bono for anything related to peace and third world poverty, it makes sense.
PanAmerican
I turned it on for the first time in over a decade. Oh dear Lord. The point of departure was the sale to Time-Warner. Sure it was a loss leader and ego stroke for Ted Turner but at least the product was identifiable as that of a news organization.
Larkspur
I was about to get all defensive about my cable news-watching habits, and then I realized that I’m pretty much only addicted to Rachel Maddow, and I have learned a lot from her. I know what fuel rods look like, and what a spent fuel pool is, and why a partial melt-down or even a full meltdown isn’t the same as a nuclear explosion, even though all of it is a big DO NOT WANT. Maybe I should have known that before, but I didn’t. So that was useful. But having the TV on 24-7, tuned to CNN or FOX or most other MSNBC coverage, uh, no. I would rather drink the milk and eat the spinach.
tBoy
@Brandon: “I only watch BBC/Al Jazeera/foreign broadcaster” is the equivalent of “I am a member of a CSA”.
That makes no sense at all.
We got rid of the TV for a number of reason so now our choices are radio and the Internet. Knowing what tripe is available on the Big Screen why would a person choose to watch the online versions of cable news? The reason I don’t waste my time perusing most domestic ‘news’ outlets is the the same reason I don’t watch Saturday Morning cartoons.
Except for McClatchy & the occasional accident there is no compelling reason to tune into online versions of the same domestic crap served up over satellite/cable/broadcast.
We are perfectly comfortable and are unapologetic when stating that we tune in to predominantly foreign news sources.
John PM
@Larkspur:
I am on a litigation listserv and the topic came up the other day about the nuclear crisis in Japan and one of the commentators stated that he thought Rachael Maddow was doing a great job providing information about the crisis and had numerous scientists and other knowledgeable people (i.e., not politicians) on to explain the issues. One person wrote back and said that since Maddow is liberal talk show host (akin to Maher or Limbaugh on the conservative side) anything she says should be taken with a grain of salt. I wrote back and noted that she is an actual journalist and a Rhodes Scholar to boot. I did not receive a response, presumably because the person had retreated into his Fox News cocoon.
ThresherK
@cmorenc: Would you rather the video feed end with whichever one (camera person, O’Brien) was facing the Ocean yelling ‘HOLY CRA….” and then the camera being tossed to the ground, with images of water inundating it moments later before the camera shorts out from seawater?
I don’t want it to happen, but for years I’ve fully expected to see this during hurricane coverage: A camera crew will have a wave break over them, then when it recedes, all we’ll see is a snapped microphone cable, with the reporter and the microphone having been washed away.
PS Anyone else guess this was Tim Goodman without knowing it?
Stefan
Some time ago here I posited that news reporting and dissemination in the US would deteriorate to the point where we’d have to rely on foreign news services to actually stay informed. I didn’t think we’d have reached that point this soon.
I, for one, welcome our new foreign news service overlords.
uptown
Don’t have cable, so I had to settle for watching it on NHK, live , on over-the-air digital TV. For free (though it’s a back channel for a local PBS, so there’s that support your local PBS station thingy).
Check http://www.mhznetworks.org to see if you can too.
Admiral_Komack
“In one taped segment (though apparently not initially intended for air), [Soledad O’Brien] gets word that they need to move out of the area she’s in. Then she panics and yells that a wave is coming and she starts running (all of this being filmed). By the time she reaches high ground in a nearby house, the camera looks out to see nothing but dry land as far as you can see.”
-Hey now!
That’s just some footage that will be used in CNN’s new show “Japan In America”, hosted by Soledad O’Brien.
JWL
What did you expect her to do? Shout back, “Have we got confirmation on that”?
In that scenario, had O’Brien stood between me and higher ground, there would have been footage of her sprawled face down in the mud with my footprints running up her back.
vernonlee
I didn’t see the Yoko segment. The booker who decided to put Yoko Ono on the air has no excuse, but I can think of worse people to have on the air. She is generally well-informed, can smuggle her lefty politics in with the “famous person” invitations, and is overall an interesting person whom I love to see defying crabby misogynists’ wishes that she Just Go Away.
So, CNN was being lazy in booking her, and her being of Japanese descent and spending a lot of time in Japan isn’t a good reason to put her on the air to talk about the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear situation, but at least they can err on the side of the positive every once in awhile.