Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Just in case you were wondering, I'd recommend NOT trusting everything you see and hear in mainstream American media. I've come across two different stories this week that illustrate that the news-as-business machine gets very sloppy, very lazy, very biased, even as it sells it as "investigative," "straight talk," and "everything you need to know."
One of the stories has to do with the referendum in Venezuela recently. The media told the story as a corrupt, power hungry president, trying to become a "dictator for life," but getting defeated in the election. I smelled something a little fishy, given that if Hugo Chavez was truly a dictator, he'd have won the election easily. Anyway, this morning, I came across
this video analysis of the news coverage, so I thought I'd share.
This is just one example about a story most Americans don't really care about. But it makes you wonder what else we "learn" from our media sources.
This is why I get most of my news via Google Reader, and read stories from the BBC and Al Jazeera as much as stories from the New York Times.
Labels: culture, media
