The Christian Science Monitor is a fine publication - but they got it all wrong in a piece out today entitled, "What YouTube doesn't show." I would have thought CS Monitor above this kind of if-you-can't-beat-em'-smear-em tactic, but I can't say I'm surprised. YouTube is emerging as the remedy to corporate media's complete failure to ask the tough questions and speak for the people - and that is bound to rattle some cages. Especially when it starts putting a dent in the power and pocketbooks of the 800 pound gorillas kicking back in those cages.
The subtitle of the piece reads:
YouTube spread news of Florida's Taser incident fast. But instant media doesn't always tell the whole story.
That's rich. As though Fox, USA Today or any other corporate media outlet always tells the whole story. That's such a laughably flawed statement that I'm surprised it made it past the editor. Instant media (which every news outlet on the planet seems to be trying to emulate in terms of speed these days) doesn't try or intend to tell the whole story. They're video clips for crying out loud! Unlike the mainstream media outlets that often do claim to be telling the whole story - and in an unbiased way at that. It's an absurd comparison.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many are conveyed by a video tape? Whatever the number, it is not always enough to understand the situation.
So we're to be prevailed upon to believe that YouTube, with its virtually unlimited capacity for the number of videos it can hold and much less constrained length of those videos - uploaded mostly by average folks like you and me at the scene - are going to provide a less complete picture of things compared to broadcast media? How many amateur videos of that University of Florida incident are there? If only we'd had a Fox News camera crew there we'd know God's own truth of exactly what happened there that fateful day!
That will not stop many people from rushing to judgment based on what they think they know.
Sage words, Mr. Jett. Good thing you're above ever doing anything like that and, say, publishing it in the Christian Science Monitor. If only people would rush to judgment based on what they think they don't know. Or crawl slowly toward judgment based on what they do know, but don't realize they know. Now that would be ideal. At exactly what point did you deem it appropriate to form the opinions you're expressing here? And exactly how much information did you feel you had to accumulate and process before what you thought you knew became what you truly know - in your estimation?
Their views are formed more by the media stampede and their own biases than by what really happened. And that says a lot about how people react and how information is used today.
And this phenomenon of the human race is suddenly unique to YouTube how? This has no doubt been the case since the first prehistoric news hack painted his first big story on a cave wall during the Upper Paleolithic. I don't know how you manage to be a first-hand witness to all events that you form an opinion about, but folks like me are constrained by our physical bodies and things called time and space. Therefore we glean what we can from what we have determined to be reliable sources and then form our opinions based on that.
As the story spread, many people formed a firmly held opinion.
Damn those pesky many people! How dare they form an opinion - let alone a firmly held one! - as the story is still spreading!
I also had an opinion on the event...
You don't say?
...but my perspective was unique.
Well of course it was! Do you really think any of us lowly many people would think that our rushed, firmly-held opinions could possibly have been formed on as solid a basis as your omniscient, omnipresent perspective would allow? Perish the thought!
I was the moderator of Sen. Kerry's talk and the only other person on stage with him.
Oh, sweet! I'm glad I kept reading! So the key is that simple. I'll just be sure to land a stage role at the heart of every world event so that I don't have to rely on spurious media coverage and eyewitness accounts. Especially accounts caught on video tape. I'd rather have someone interpret for me what happened than be forced to rely on live video footage. Who knows what kind of judgments I might make if I actually saw what happened myself?
Take the case of Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida student who had a Taser used against him by campus police at a speech by Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts last month. Videotapes of the incident made the evening television news and immediately found their way onto YouTube.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was called in to investigate whether the actions of the officers were appropriate. Their 300-page report was recently turned over to university officials. (A summary of it is at www.president.ufl.edu/incident/.) The report concluded the officers acted "well within" their guidelines and also pointed out that the student had provoked an earlier disturbance on campus.
Wow - what complete idiots all we gullible many people have been! Why didn't we wait until the completely unbiased, 300-page report came to us via university officials from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement rather than rush to judgment based on eyewitness accounts and multiple video clips of what happened? So that kid wasn't actually being knocked down, sat on and roughed up by four cops and Tased repeatedly while screaming and pleading for mercy and help. Obviously those video clips and all those eyewitnesses must have gotten it wrong somehow. No seriously! The report says so!
The really great part?
In a letter released October 29, Mr. Meyer publicly apologized for his "failure to act calmly" during the speech and admitted he had "stepped out of line" and was truly sorry for tarnishing the university's image.
That doesn't begin to portray the tone and content of Meyer's letter. It was an abject, groveling plea for mercy. I wasn't halfway through it when I couldn't have been persuaded to believe other than that this kid was blackmailed into writing this letter. Why should the authorities deal with repeat offenders when you can make an example of a kid like this, have your thugs beat the shit out of him, threaten him with who knows what afterward, get him to write a prostrate mea culpa - and then get the Christian Science Monitor to put out a piece like Mr. Jett's here. It's a complete coup for the Cheney/Rove/Bush/Kristol regime and their fear-mongering tactics of frightening U.S. citizens - especially those who might dare to engage their brains, ethics or morals - into self-censorship and trembling complicity in its tyranny.
I almost wonder if John P. Philbin didn't coach Karl Rove on writing this piece with the help of Bill Kristol.
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What YouTube doesn't show | Christian Science Monitor
I'd like to say a very heartfelt thank you to Dave Allen for his post over at Pampelmoose. It may be the single most heartening thing I've read in a week at least.
If you're a regular OPB listener like me, you're probably about ready to throw your radio through the nearest window at this point. Just when I think it has to have been a full month since OPB started what seems like their monthly "give us your money and we'll only harass you for two weeks" campaign, I turn on the radio and they're still at it! I either have the worst timing ever or they spend fifty minutes of every hour doing everything from begging to guilt tripping to barking orders for listeners like me to show my support by calling right now. Well what if I gave a week ago? Do they give me a secret, pledge-drive free frequency to which I can tune my radio to get my regular programming back? No! Even if I'd been the first person to call on the first day of the programming hostage drive, I'd have to put up with the grating mess for just as long as the last person to call on the last day of the drive. It makes no sense!
I considered starting a series on Ask-Steve.com in which I would feature glaring typos from prominent news outlets, websites, e-mail newsletters, etc. I can see now that, given the fact that it's becoming difficult to find a page without a typo, that series would quickly consume my entire blog. But I'll post one more anyway.
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