Please smack the two kids CNN just interviewed in TImes Square. The first (“Patrick works at the Times Square TKTS booth,”) for declaring himself personally frightened by the successive and entirely predictable deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and now Michael Jackson. Also for realizing too late that bemoaning the loss of (hand over heart no less) “Such a great man, that I grew up with,” might be misinterpreted by the national audience. Second guy for being a journalist willing to give an interview to another journalist about a subject upon which he is in no particular way qualified to speak, apart from happening to belong to the age cohort the correspondent was looking for. Oh, and managing to get both “y’know” and “like” in during his 14 seconds on a major network.
Screenshot for those of you who can’t log on to the LA Times site.
CNN has ACTUALLY entitled the next hour of programming thusly: “Our special investigation: ‘Somali Pirates: Can They Be Stopped?’”
Good goddamn GRIEF. I formally declare the line between local news shops and major media outfits to be null, void, squished, etc.
What’s that? I’m seven or so years late to this revelation? Oh.
I am two months older than 27-year-old Ben Ferguson, who spent the last five minutes gabbing about piracy live on CNN, an international news network. I am schadenfreudically thankful that he sounded precisely his age (with apologies to myself et al, for stereotyping 27-year-olds.) Also, for the small grace of Ferguson’s outfit. The poor dear looked almost exactly like a Buckley boy on the first day of fifth grade, whose mother, alas, had forgotten to take his uniform to the tailors to be let out.
The above is not a clip of today, but a clip of another day in which Ben Ferguson appeared on CNN, an international news network. They doggie-bagged his actual ass as a parting gift, I suspect.
And now I return to my world, where I, alas, am the youngest nationally-syndicated radio host of only this house. Part of it. Fine, the lesser part. Fuck off.
— Lyrically-inclined Fox News anchor Shepherd Smith speculating on how Binghamton shooter Jiverly Voong might have died.
Id., I missed this last week, but take a gander at CNN’s most grating anchor, Rick Sanchez, inviting Joe the Plumber on the air and then reading the spottier parts of the man’s credit report—including details of his outstanding medical bills—out loud on the air.
Rick Sanchez, quoted last fall in a flattering New York Observer profile:
“I know it sounds a little hackneyed,” he said, “but defending the little guy is hard these days, and it’s not something that anybody wants to do, and I do it because—not just because I’m a minority—but because I frankly feel what it’s like to be these people who are really downtrodden right now, you know, to be a Mexican immigrant. Because I know what it’s like to be poor.”
Which is probably why the CNN anchor behaved so compassionately in 1990 when he ran over an intoxicated pedestrian (who happened to be a carpenter and later died of his injuries) while driving under the influence in Miami:
“Though Sanchez says he tried to aid Smuzinick at the scene of the accident and flag down motorists, eyewitnesses claim the anchorman ignored the injured man and loudly told police and bystanders that blood tests were pointless, and would hurt his public image.” [Miami New Times]
Sanchez would later be successfully charged with DUI. Some issues with the working man, Sanchez? Or are you just a really big asshole?
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Reporting with attribution: when a news organization reports a story and cites the source of said story - usually another news organization.
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Amazing.
Hilarious. I will print this out and stare at it while working out. (Backstory: I got laid off from Videogum. The Megan Fox...
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Gold Star Bloathell
For a while now I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a tumblelog called “This Is A Gawker Comment” featuring grabs of the...
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I measure a man’s seriousness by the degree of moral ambivalence he is able to intimate in his appearance. Here is surface, the subtle...
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Press Relations 101a Illustrated.
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Where is the Comment Button?
Go here to get one.
I am sorry, this whole tumblr thing is throwing me for an interfacey loop.
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Because at some point, we'd all look at each other and realize we were trapped in a live and terribly under-funded remake of 'The Breakfast Club'?
