Originally published in November 2008.
Are you sick and tired of the news coverage of the presidential election?
SO AM I!
I actually enjoy politics; it’s the TV news coverage I hate.
I do not know anyone who likes it. Left, right or center, everyone agrees that the mainstream TV news coverage of American politics sucks.
People find it hopelessly biased, superficial, confusing, sensationalistic or boring. Perhaps all five at once.
The result is an ill-informed public. Public ignorance gives politicians and their handlers the opportunity to lie as much as they want.
Drives me nuts.
I grew up as a political junkie. My mom taught me well; she was extremely involved in politics herself. She even ran for the United States Congress, 6th district of Oklahoma, in 1970 when I was 12. She got smeared. The matches didn’t come until after election day. Oops.
Being active in politics was my mom’s life. Outside her job as a college professor in microbiology and being the mom of four kids. Busy lady.
Anyway…I grew up discussing politics all the time. I haven’t changed much.
Top that off with working twenty years in TV News, and you’ve got one very opinionated woman on the subject of TV news coverage of politics.
Which is what lead me to create the internet viral video spoofing campaign 2008.
THIS VIDEO IS NO LONGER ONLINE
It’s a manifestation of how little respect I have for the mainstream American TV news media and the political culture it has inspired here in the United States. So I pretended to be a (naked) space alien giving an objective analysis of the election based on what is seen on the TV news.
Call me a nerd, but I love SUBSTANTIAL policy debate.
- With lots of FACTS.
- Based on REALITY.
- UNEMOTIONAL in tone.
- Plenty of accurate, historical CONTEXT.
You know, the exact opposite of what you find on TV News today. Which is: a bunch of screamie-meamie, ignorant bimbos and bimbets blathering on hysterically, ignoring the facts, basing their “analysis” on whatever pre-conceived agenda they have and the crapola the “campaign” is spewing at the moment.
The campaigns are spinning tales faster than Mother Goose on steroids. That’s what they are paid to do.
The campaigns desperately want to control the message. They sit around a table and come up with a storyline they think will work on the TV audience. They don’t talk about what their candidate really stands for, but rather what storyline can they feed the public via TV that will get the most votes.
All campaigns do it.
All TV outlets eat it up, to one degree or another.
Reality is usually irrelevant. Whatever the campaign can get said in front of a TV camera is what becomes relevant.
Which brings me to Sara Palin.
She is the icing on the cake.
Ever since ugly, nerdy Richard Nixon bombed out in front of the TV cameras next to hunkster John F. Kennedy, politicians have geared their campaigns more and more toward the camera’s viewpoint.
Today, it doesn’t matter whether a nominee is a REAL candidate, just so they can look like one on TV.
The politicos know that whatever the TV audience sees is what they will believe. They have been operating this way for a long time.
But finally, with Sara Palin, that philosophy bit them in the ass, and now she is the butt of international jokes.
They can not COMPLETELY control the media, so a bit of reality seeps into the coverage. Not much mind you, but enough for some people to realize that Ms. Palin is less qualified to be V.P. than Barney Fife. At least he read the Mayberry Times.
OK, really. Even if you agree with some of her policies, (which I do not) she is obviously a mental midget. I’m not trying to be mean. I am not jealous because she is a thousand times prettier than me.
Nope, she simply is not even remotely qualified. It shows whenever her scripts are not properly prepared before the camera rolls.
I wish brains enough to have a deep, broad knowledge of the world situation, both current and historic, was seen as the first qualification of a national leader. But that doesn’t play well on TV so people are convinced other qualifications are important too.
Gazing out over the Russian landscape qualifies as foreign policy experience? I ate an English muffin for breakfast.
The handlers on the republican side thought they could get away with it. They’ve gotten away with so much over the years. They knew nothing much was ever real, so they think they can get away with it forever.
Then, a glimpse of reality seeps in. The public sees it. The public is no longer fooled.
Sara Palin was SUCH a bad pick that her handlers have had an impossible job covering up that fact. Lord knows they have tried. (Years later, she still has a loyal, albeit small following). Sometimes it just gets too big for them to handle. Then you have people like me calling her out as a Barbie doll green screened over a pile of horseshit on YouTube. (I took that video down a few years later, so not is not there now.) Internet video is something else the political handlers can not control. I am forever grateful for that and hope it continues.
It’s not a coincidence that it was hurricane Katrina when the public finally noticed that George Bush is a presidential klutz. Hurricane Katrina was TOO BIG OF AN INCIDENT FOR THE POLITICAL HANDLERS TO CONTROL. So the cat was finally let out of the bag. (UPDATE: Today, things are much worse. I bet he could pull it off today.)
Light, camera, action! It’s not an atmosphere conducive to substantial debate on important policy matters.
Too bad for us all.
Thanks for reading Video Production Tips.
Lorraine Grula, News Nerd and journalism advocate
I couldn’t agree more about hurricane Katrina-
Clearly it was Bush’s job to call the mayor of New Orleans and personally tell him what to do to save his citizens. How is he supposed to know that a huge storm is coming? It wasn’t like it was broadcast over EVERY TV, RADIO and NEWSPAPER for a WEEK before it hit. He was busy doing something that was very important I’m sure.
And while we’re pointing the finger of incompetance at Bush, let’s not forget the county officials and state officials. At least Bush could have personally called one of them and said, “Hey, you may want to evacuate your citizens”.
Why didn’t Bush fly down and drive the buses himself? Was he all high and mighty, just sitting in the White House?
Or maybe he just assumed that the citizen of the area had elected people with at least half a brain, who would actually be looking out for them. No, we can’t take responsiblity for our own actions, we have to blame Bush.
Evidently, the press thinks he’s the only one who can think and act!! Everyone else is excused.
No question many people deserve blame for the fiasco of Katrina. Not just government officials on the federal, state and local levels, but also many of the citizens and businesses involved. And let us not forget that the levy infrastructure in N.O. had been neglected for decades.
My point is that the American public finally saw the incompetence of George W. Bush during that event because it was impossible to control the story that made it onto the TV. They tried. Everything with them was a photo opportunity and that is how they reacted to Katrina too. But Katrina was too big for them to manage the entire story.
George W. Bush and his crew were glaringly incompetent many times before Katrina but not too many people were able to see that because Bush’s handlers were better able to control the story as seen on the TV.
As a person who worked in TV news for many years, I do not watch the news in the same way most people do. I know the limitations of the medium and think books are a much better source for accurate information. Of course books are not a day-to-day source. But I read a lot of books.
I think it is incredibly difficult for anyone to know what is really going on in this world if they rely merely on TV news, but unfortunately, most people do not have the time or inclination to investigate facts beyond what they see on TV news.
To understand how the media really works, read a book called “Toxic Sludge is Good for You,” by John Stauber and Shelton Rampdon. I LOVED that book.
Lorraine