1. It's pretty amazing to see it all summed up so well, and I honestly never thought of things in terms of what's cheaper and what isn't. I think it's a bad trend that it's cheaper to cover Britney or Anna Nicole or any other vapid, pointless subject than it is to actually broadcast news that is actually relevant.

On the plus side, I suppose, it is a crumbling industry that is continually striving to remain relevant AND profitable. I think, in the not too distant future, fewer and fewer people are going to turn to the mainstream media for information.

Thanks for this video, Jeff. It's definitely worth looking into.

Dan at 3:56PM on Mar 1st 2008

2. Jeff,

this reminds me of the phenom of "pica" in malnourished mammals. I'm grazing in odd places to get a complete balanced news diet. LINK TV seems to on more and more in my household.

watching the movie, "Idiocracy" (sp) makes me shrink in my chair.....what global map is in the minds of FOX news viewers?

great video, thanks Jeff.

Dan, we're gonna miss this guy, aren't we?

ah, Clem at 5:09PM on Mar 1st 2008

3. Saying that stupid people are mostly limited to the Fox News Network is grossly incorrect. The stupid people are the ones that don't watch the news at all. Maybe you experts should visit other nations such as China, North Korea, Burma, Iran, Zimbabwe, Sudan, ext... where the news is controlled by the government, and is usually nothing but anti-American diatribes. Think about it. Maybe it’s worth a documentary.

Tsar Nicholas II at 6:47PM on Mar 1st 2008

4. Fox viewers may not be the most stupid,but
according to a poll by Pew Research,they
are the least informed about national and
world news.

BOB JOHNSON at 8:38PM on Mar 1st 2008

5. Bob Johnson, yours is a very intersting post. And speaking of Pew research and the Fux Noise type....

According to Pew Research, fundamentalists also lead the nation in divorces. Got to love those, "family values" preachers. I recently heard the syndrome referred to as the, "Larry Craig Effect."

Captain Negative at 10:51PM on Mar 1st 2008

6. Jeff,

Are you back? Good to see ya back...if, indeed you are back

mac at 12:04AM on Mar 2nd 2008

7. Does this mean that you're stickin' around?... good.

not-pboyfloyd at 4:29AM on Mar 2nd 2008

8. The news can be quite selective at the local level also.

I grew up near Niagara Falls,NY about 4 miles upriver from the "Love Canal" toxic waste site.

This is where the Occidental Chemical Corp.,the largest employer/taxbase in Niagara County, buried 20,000 tons of toxic crap in 55 gallon drums,covered it, and walked away. (circa 1946)

In the mid '50s housing boom around there, many houses, schools, and playgrounds were built for people who had recently moved there for the new industrial jobs that had opened up.

After 20 or so years of being buried, those drums rusted through and began leaking "spooge" into the ground water.

By the mid '70s, people began noticing that it seemed that many folks around there had bad luck healthwise.

Nobody knew what was up until all that snow from the infamous "Blizzard Of '77" that made the Buffalo area synonymous with bad winter weather, began melting in the late spring.

After the ground became saturated from the excessive meltoff, these buried barrels began popping out of the ground EXACTLY like the coffins in the movie "Poltergeist".

I remember driving by there in my dads '63 Chevy Belair stationwagon rotbox and seeing about a half dozen of these barrels unearthed,lying on their side ,spewing black goo allover what little snow was left.

The local news media covered this story sparsely for about 10 days, and then the coverage tapered off to nothing for many months.

Not until 3 EPA agents were taken hostage by the Love Canal Homeowners Association, demanding President Carter show up personally and hear their complaints, did any more local news become available on the subject.(I heard a rumor that all the agents got stuffed on wings, pizza, subs and homecooked Polish/Italian meals while in "captivity" EAT ! EAT ! Torture ?)

Well, Carter came an got those people relocated to safer housing, and the local media went away again.

This story would have been totally ignored/buried if it weren't for the Niagara Falls,Ontario, Canada newspapers and Hamilton and Toronto television stations.(40 and 60 miles away, respectively)Rabbit ear antennas-no problem 1

Canada had little economic gain/loss from sheltering Occidentals "oops", and so they called it as they saw it.

In 1985 I moved to Atlanta,Ga.for work purposes. While there, news broke about another large toxic waste site discovered 800 yards from the house I grew up in.

A day or two of national coverage is all I managed to check out before the story fell off the "radar". My parents told me that the story was about the same in the local hometown paper, which had a circulation of about 30,000 daily. Buffalo TV covered this story sparingly, and then dissappeared,, according to my dad.

About 6 months later, I was watching PBS in Atlanta when a show came on that I immediately recognised as "The Nature of Things with David Suzuki", a show I used to watch back home produced by TV Ontario and originally broadcast on UHF channel 19 in Toronto.(the loop antenna on the rabbit ears needed a little help, with tinfoil and electric transforner winding wire festooning my bedroom everywhere. Hey, on a good night i could get CH. 43 Cleveland- 200 miles away!)

Back to Atlanta. The general subject of the show was "The Toxic waste sites of Niagara County, N.Y." where he revealed that there were 265 KNOWN waste sites in the county, and several more nuclear dumping grounds from the Manhattan Project.

Professor Dave continued by revealing his 3 picks for his "coveted" skull and crossbones awards for the most dangerous sites- the Hyde Park landfill,Love Canal, and another in downtown NF that I can't remember the name of.

Hyde Park is particularly nasty. It's groundwater emerges as a free-flowing "waterfall" in the lower Niagara gorge where people use trails and bikepaths for recreation below.

There was/is so much methelene chloride (the active ingredient in paint stripper)in this "water" that people splashed by this stuff immediaately got chemical burns. It is strong enough to melt synthetic fabric.

This flow is now encased in a concrete drainpipe that carries the water directly into the river below.This is the reason for Canadian interest in the subject.

This water flows into Lake Ontario 15 miles downstream,and has polluted it to the level that it is recommended not to eat more than 4 ounces of topfeeder fish per month,and no bottom feeders whatsoever.

Compare this to Lake Erie,which has a 30 million dollar commercial fishing business, and is growingrapidly. Erie is upstream of all the Niagara pollution.

"Luckily", the one 800 yards from my folks house that was started covertly (all work done after 1 AM and then paved over for a parking lot) after the Love Canal ran out of room, didn't make the list (No. 4?),

But he did reveal that this site contained 28,500 TONS of waste. That equals the fully loaded weight of a WW2 Essex class aircraft carrier(Enterprise)and is 8,500 tons larger than Love Canal(bragging rights?). He also noted that the groundwater monitoring wells at this site are to be maintained for the next 200 years.

This wasn't in a disheveled lower class neighborhood.This was/is a clean cut, mostly lower middle and middle class city of about 35,000 in well maintained homes including several mansions built during the "glory days" of a century ago

The people living there were mostly the WW2 generation. They came home from the war got jobs,got married,and started families in these homes.

The bottom line- Without access to a source of information that has no ingrained economic interest in/on a topic, one risks being misled,misinformed or left completely blind to news that could quite literally be life and death.

Oh yeah, thr Love Canal folks finally got compensated for their bulldozed homes, 27 YEARS LATER.

PS-I guess that explains the orangeish lime green "fog" that drifted out of the sewer grates when I was a kid.

BILL G at 7:03AM on Mar 2nd 2008

9. Local News. I got in the elevator at the courthouse. I stood next to one of our local anchors and his cameraman. There was a big story developing in our county and they were there to get the scoop. I was involved, behind the scenes, so I was pretty well informed.

Then the anchor says to the young cameraman, "Whats the angle on this story?" I listened as this young man said, "I don't know, I think its about . . . ." All wrong. His explanation didn't even come close to the facts or the truth.

Sure nuff, when I saw the evening news the incorrect story was what led the broadcast. Often, thats how you get the news, from an eighteen year old cameraman who admits that he doesn't know what the story is about in the first place.

Steve Seivers at 8:50AM on Mar 2nd 2008

10. "#9 Sure nuff, when I saw the evening news the incorrect story was what led the broadcast. Often, thats how you get the news, from an eighteen year old cameraman who admits that he doesn't know what the story is about in the first place.

Steve Seivers"
___________________

Hey Steve. Great observation. I think a lot of the reason behind the poor quality of information on the local news is that most of these anchors' only real aspirations are to be nothing more than talking heads on some network broadcast, and they sure as hell wouldn't know the first thing about journalism or how to even be a marginally effective reporter. In today's news, unfortunately, image is a considerably more valuable currency than skill. Indeed, news today is less about disseminating information and more about the public's perception of the anchor and network.

Dan at 5:48PM on Mar 2nd 2008

11. Yeah, I'd love an anchor position. Just sit there and read a teleprompter for a couple hours. Must be a rough life.

Strados at 9:34AM on Mar 3rd 2008

12. "#11. Yeah, I'd love an anchor position. Just sit there and read a teleprompter for a couple hours. Must be a rough life.

Strados"
_________________

Well... It must be pretty tricky. I mean, Bush has been using a prompter for years, and look at that freakin' train wreck.

Then again, the guy IS lethally challenged by a bag of pretzels, so maybe I'm giving him a little more credit than he deserves?

Dan at 6:22PM on Mar 3rd 2008