The Timing of the Foley "Fallout" (Kingdom, America)

[Booko]

Originally Posted by FeathersinHair

Is the Bush administration just having one of those periods where things are piling up? While I know the Foley scandal is of great interest to the media, the headlines seem to be focusing on that and not some of the other issues of national interest. (Such as the temporary "OKing of Domestic Spying" and the Senate allowing the President interpretation of the Geneva Convention.) I understand that the Foley issue has the makings of something that will grab ratings, but does focusing on it distract us from what might be larger issues?

See if you can catch a repeat of Wolf Blitzer's interview with Bill Maher from this afternoon. Bill make quite a joke of the obvious "our viewers want to know..." about the whole Foley deal and the uber coverage of the scandal, while completely ignoring other newsworthy subjects, say, like all the guys that got blown up in Iraq today and how that whole thing appears to be going down the toilet, and fast.

But you know how our culture is, whenever it has something to do with sex we're all over it, but people's eyes glaze over if you talk to them about something fudging corporate records or lobbying, and they often plain don't want to hear the horrid news of deaths in Iraq or Darfur.

I'm not so sure anywhere else is really all that different, other than some other nations' new media still have more journalists than just communications majors.

[Feathers in Hair]

That's very true. I'm guilty myself of not wanting to hear about horrific events- my mind does a kind of side-step when the news is incoming. It's something I'm working on.

Thanks for mentioning the interview! I'll see if I can find it. I'll admit that the idea for this thread was prompted by Jon Stewart introducing "The Daily Show" by saying how the news was going to be about the Senate decision and Iraq, until this other came up. (To their credit, they still carried the story about the Geneva convention interpretation decision.)