Archive for commercialize

Commercialized news does it again! Accuracy schmaccuracy.

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All day there have been ferocious flurries of reports about whether or not there has been an arrest in the Boston Marathon bomb case. I caught this tweet of a concise recap of who got it right and who got it wrong:

tweet boston marathon bad reporting

I tweeted this in response: It appears that lefty, commie Marxist socialist Obama-owned MSNBC had more accurate reporting than other news sources. #CommercializedNews

It's been an embarrassment of scrambling news sources trying to justify their erroneous reporting. CNN much? Commercialized news strikes again, where profit trumps accuracy, and infotainment trumps real news.

Hey, remember when the Daily Show hammered CNN and Fox for their erroneous “unconstitutional mandate hyperventilation” over Supreme Court decision? Me too!

Snarky, hilarious, harsh, and even poignant tweets have been flying all over the Twitterverses about how news outlets seemed to be more concerned about getting a scoop than about accuracy in reporting. Here are a few that I caught (one is a RT by me of another tweet):

Now check out this excerpt from an email from a TV industry executive, fresh from Politico:

It's not about getting to the truth or serving the public good, it's about who can make the wittiest joke to impress their friends. This is an important story for the nation, and reporters from organizations new and old are trying to cover it. People make mistakes.

Whatsamattayou? This isn't about getting to the truth!  Hey, people make mistakes! Even the so-called professionals who claim they're the ones who you can TRUST!

As you can see in the video, here's what the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Boston division had to say:

Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack. Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.

facts schmacts smaller

details schmetails

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Naming Nemo: Commercializing the weather

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naming nemo

The Weather Channel decided to name the Big New England Blizzard as part of a policy they previously announced. They say they will give names to winter storms so that you and I can follow them more easily. We apparently need snazzy, memorable names to do that, because apparently keeping track of major news of major storms along major swaths of America is too difficult for dimwits like us.

So commercializing the weather will fix all that. Just like commercializing the news allowed us all to be so much more informed by outlets with absolutely no bias whatsoever.

As you can see from the screen grab above, some meteorologists aren’t exactly thrilled, so they started a Facebook page, “STOP the Weather Channel from naming winter storms.”

fb page stop weather channel from naming storms

Per the L.A. Times hard copy (this information has since been scrubbed from the online version), Thomas Downs, a meteorologist with Weather 2000, a New York-based forecasting and consulting firm, “speculates that because the Weather Channel is owned by NBCUniversal, stations owned by that company will be the most enthusiastic about using the names.” I can picture it now:

NBCU: Weeee! We get to use totes adorbs names! Weeee! Higher ratings! Weeee! We’re enthusiastic!

George Wright, a meteorologist and the founder of Wright Weather Consulting in New York, made this point in an interview with The Times: “A hurricane is something that’s more unusual and devastating. If you start naming other storms, people will suddenly think this might be a hurricane.”

Joel Meyer, founder and president of AccuWeather, a Weather Channel competitor, issued a statement this fall blasting the Weather Channel for its decision.

“In unilaterally deciding to name winter storms, the Weather Channel has confused media spin with science and public safety.”

Of course, the Weather Channel would never decide to start naming storms just to draw more viewers to their site. That would be self-serving and give their detractors more fodder for criticism:

The Weather Channel decided to start naming storms after it coined a 2011 event Snowtober, a name that got picked up on Twitter and in media outlets and drew more viewers to the site.

Oh.

Well, at least they’re giving a great deal of thought to the choice of names so as to maintain a modicum of real gravitas:

[Brian Norcross, senior executive director of weather content and presentation at the Weather Channel] supervised the creation of this year’s list of winter storm names, which also include Draco, Gandolf and Walda. While the Weather Channel first looked at using baby names from the early 20th century, it eventually settled on names of gods from Norse and other mythologies. Jorel, the father of Superman, nearly made the list, but was swapped out at the last minute for Jove.

Cartman is still waiting in the wings.

cartman hippies

 

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Video- The Daily Show: Monetizing the Obama Presidency

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