I Side with the Author/Guest, Not Schuster. Mainstream Media is Part of the Problem With the Loons Getting too Much Play.

This birther shit should still be mostly limited to the Internet, and FOX not News, and unfortunately, CNN, where the In-house Republicans like Dobbs, are clearly crazy. But now that the Mainstream Media is running with the story, it, Mainstream Media is not only reporting, but it is nurturing the silly story. Not just with the birther story, specifically, but it is a heinous trend, and harming to society, when Mainstream Media takes this wink, wink, nudge, nudge mentality to fatuous people, issues, and causes, and stories.

On the one hand, the reason a lot of not-exactly-really news gets on air, is because 24 hours, 7 days a week, is a lot of airtime to fill. Secondly, like pre adolescent girls who do not want to be out of step from the fashion of the moment, these 24 hour news networks (more so than the major broadcast networks) can only go so far in showing forbearance and sound judgment, when the other guy or guys are running what ever loon story du jour. And even if the old adage was, "If it bleeds, it leads," I would update and amend that to,"If it's weird and/or controversial, better get it on air before the others do." Ya. I know. Not as catchy. But it is they way things are.
Noticeable in this video is Schuster's defensiveness, that gets spun to offensiveness (in the sports metaphor sense.) Now realistically I can not tell you his state of mind there, but it looked to me like, he on a gut level, at least, agreed with the guest. But his paychecks are coming from a 24 hour news network. How willing was he to agree that Marshall McLuhan was not only right, but only got to stage one of the theory about how the medium is the message?

It has to be weird to be working in that end of the broadcast news business. All of us who took mass comm courses over the past 30 or so years, learned Marshall McLuhan's theory. And here now, at this point in time, it is damned obvious how much the media (he said medium, but let's not quibble) is actually shaping the news, and in fact making things that are really trivial shit into this thing we call the news.

And it is a bad thing, often, looking at what gets elevated to that status. But those who are actively in the product delivery side, like David Schuster dare not admit this, on air. He (and rather foolishly, to my mind) tried to pin the rap on Lizzie Cheney. He dodged the personal responsibility for inflating her status as a leader, and totally punted on the issue of whether or not Lizzie's status was due in great part to the fact that Media kept putting her face and voice on the airwaves.

David. I get why you were so chicken shit. But dude. We have a word for that level of chicken shit, bullshit lying: Conservatism.

Come on! I hope the next time someone criticizes the medium and the media for conflating fatuous people, issues, and causes, and stories, you man up and say, something like:

"Ya know. That is something I can not honestly say is completely not true."

That at least will keep you as more honest that the Lizzie Cheney's of the world.