The British – doing the job the American media won’t do
23 Replies to “Not Waiting For The Asteroid”
I suspect the msm will ignore this trend because it’s happening on the intertube, which is becoming part of the vast (angry! extreme!) right wing conspiracy in the view of dems and liberals. I note obozo has singled out the blogosphere several times and compared it to the mainstream media which he regards as reasoned and accurate. This could be his most ambitious project to date; demonizing the internet.
The Brit media, I note are getting their biggest referrals from the Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregator – an organisation mentioned in the same breath as Rush or Beck in some quarters. Oh the the ironing.
Except if you read the story the first and third most visited sites are both BBC, which is hardly doing anything the US media won’t do.
In fact, it’s probably worse in terms of a silly view of the universe.
“The ironing is delicious” – Bart Simpson
Chip: please give us your theory for why traffic has increased sevenfold in recent months – mostly via drudge.
If it is to get the truth on BO i suspect it will only a matter of time before they are censored via the fairness doctrine.
I read at least one Brit paper a day. I never read the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail or Hamilton Spectator. Now people can spin that anyway they want but the bottom line is the MSM is losing customers and they don’t seem to be making an effort to get them back. That strikes me as a very bad business plan.
Two things are nice about this article. First, it is nice to see somebody MEASURE something for a change instead of the usual fudgy, squashy cr@p.
Second, it was very nice to see The Guardian waaaaay the hell down at 135th in the top 200 rankings.
Chip’s critique is well taken, the BBC is indeed no better than the CBC or CNNABCNBCCBSMSNBCblahblahblah. One caveat I note though Chip, the BBC is in the pay of a -different- government, and so its slant varies considerably from the US. BBC doesn’t give slavish, fulsome coverage to Barry, they give it to Gordon Brown and his red shirts in Labour.
Some difference in the filter lets one compare and contrast, dare I say even juxtapose. 🙂
Case in point, the Two Million Tea Bag DC Non-Riot. Brit papers and TV didn’t actively lie about who showed up or what they did. They just said “Looks like a couple of million p1ssed off Americans to me, Nigel.”
Which kinda made the US MSM spin effort look like what it was. Active lying.
But hey, The One’s got a plan to fix all that traffic leaving the USA for Britain. Non-profit MSM paid for by the US gubmint. aka newspaper bailout.
Except if you read the story the first and third most visited sites are both BBC, which is hardly doing anything the US media won’t do.
~chip
I had an argument with someone on this site a few months back that centered around the fact that the MSM wouldn’t report on the Car-B-Qs in Paris in the summer of ’06.
The other guy said that he was in the UK and that they were adequately covered there.
I think that the fact that the North American MSM wouldn’t cover up to 2000 cars being torched in riots every night for 2 straight weeks is a good reason to distrust and even ignore the “Gate Keeper Media” here.
That said, if the Car-B-Qs were covered in the UK as they happened, it is a significant difference.
One difference is that the British news people probably don’t think of themselves as part of the Establishment.
Oh I don’t know about that John Lewis. The U.K. is still very class conscious with a lot of wannabes. The BBC judging from what I read in the Spectator magazine, is a major pain-in-the-arse. They are far more international in their news coverage though,sometimes to the point of ridiculous, talking about unknown people in barely recognizable
places, about very uninteresting things. (well at least to us)
Heard a great quote the other day – “the fourth estate has now entered the fifth dimension”.
Heh, heh!
When you do not report the ‘real news facts’, sh*t gonna happen. Ordinary people can go on the ‘net’ and get the facts for themselves. They will continue to lose readership until they report the ‘real’ news.
Jeff, thanks for the article. Love that opening:
“It is lovely to feature in other people’s dreams. The problem comes when they wake up.”
Meanwhile, according to Mark Steyn, the Washington Post is losing $1.10 per copy sold. The Lewinsky media has quite a business model, competing rigorously with a large (but shrinking) msm for 30% of the market while aggressively attacking, annoying or boring 70% of the potential market.
Larry Bennett – honestly, not trying to pick a fight with you (re. dogs’ bums or anything else), but the U.K. has a living tradition of idiosyncratic, combative, outspoken journalism that doesn’t exist in North America – it’s pretty much the only thing I admire about the place at this point. If anything, the influence in this case of class (always slippery to pin down) is probably a plus; a significant number of British journalists will happily offend anybody rather than be good worker-bees. Nor is this true only of toffs; read up on Julie Burchill.
The BBC is lefty, but granted that slant its foreign coverage is the only one I know of worth looking at. If Ulan Bator got nuked there’s an even chance it wouldn’t be mentioned on CNN.
Thanks, Gord Tulk, for the Hugh Hewit interview with Michael Ledeen about the massive anti-government rallies in Tehran over the weekend. Ledeen feels that these mean the regime is finished and mentioned that these protests were larger than the 1979 protests. As Gord also mentioned, the North American news is rather quiet about this.
Video footage on BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8262273.stm
Further video showing a significant riot police presence (I understand green is the colour of Mousavi supporters): http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2009/09/day-greens-encircled-riot-guards.html
Well, there is some objective and quality news reporting, editorials and columns that we’d never see here in the Great Satan.
For serious, competent professional writing, I like the London Daily Telegraph, London Times and the Financial Times.
The Brits have their share of “progressive” Toronto Star-like birdcage liner also, such as the London Independent and The Guardian.
As far as broadcast news & their websites, the BBC News is as leftist-slanted as most of the Canadian SDA posters say it is and as leftist as MSNBC and CNN (alias Communist Network News).
Overall though, even their better quality MSM are squeamish about honest writing about Politically Correct matters, e.g. unlimited 3rd world immigration, the domestic dangers of Islamism.
It means people are looking elsewhere for other views – that’s good. Where is the Canadian flag in that graphic? http://tinyurl.com/njult5
You’re right of course, Black Mamba, CNN doesn’t even know where Ulan Bator is; I’m not sure I do. But the BBC seems to have no trouble paying an enourmous wage to a so-called comedian who thinks it’s funny to make a live call to an elderly actor (the fellow who play Manuel on Faulty Towers) and make lewd remarks about what he did with his grand-
daughter. This was months ago and he still hasn’t been fired. That’s not humour, it’s inhuman.
Nice to see the Daily Mail arising from obscurity in the US. They have been consistently Labour/Brown haters and the comments are the best part.
If you want to catch what everyday Brits think of the liberal rot the Daily Mail is the place to go.
You know its a sad day when you see Obama on the Media 24/7. He’s starting to be as much a nuisance as William Shatner. Popping up all over, like a weed in our faces. Stink weed.
JMO
I suspect the msm will ignore this trend because it’s happening on the intertube, which is becoming part of the vast (angry! extreme!) right wing conspiracy in the view of dems and liberals. I note obozo has singled out the blogosphere several times and compared it to the mainstream media which he regards as reasoned and accurate. This could be his most ambitious project to date; demonizing the internet.
The Brit media, I note are getting their biggest referrals from the Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregator – an organisation mentioned in the same breath as Rush or Beck in some quarters. Oh the the ironing.
Except if you read the story the first and third most visited sites are both BBC, which is hardly doing anything the US media won’t do.
In fact, it’s probably worse in terms of a silly view of the universe.
“The ironing is delicious” – Bart Simpson
Chip: please give us your theory for why traffic has increased sevenfold in recent months – mostly via drudge.
If it is to get the truth on BO i suspect it will only a matter of time before they are censored via the fairness doctrine.
I read at least one Brit paper a day. I never read the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail or Hamilton Spectator. Now people can spin that anyway they want but the bottom line is the MSM is losing customers and they don’t seem to be making an effort to get them back. That strikes me as a very bad business plan.
Apparently huge news in Iran and we have not heard boo about it in North America:
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/MediaPlayer/AudioPlayer.aspx?ContentGuid=8ac8bd2b-1945-4b96-badf-025026ea2556
starts at about the ten minute mark
Two things are nice about this article. First, it is nice to see somebody MEASURE something for a change instead of the usual fudgy, squashy cr@p.
Second, it was very nice to see The Guardian waaaaay the hell down at 135th in the top 200 rankings.
Chip’s critique is well taken, the BBC is indeed no better than the CBC or CNNABCNBCCBSMSNBCblahblahblah. One caveat I note though Chip, the BBC is in the pay of a -different- government, and so its slant varies considerably from the US. BBC doesn’t give slavish, fulsome coverage to Barry, they give it to Gordon Brown and his red shirts in Labour.
Some difference in the filter lets one compare and contrast, dare I say even juxtapose. 🙂
Case in point, the Two Million Tea Bag DC Non-Riot. Brit papers and TV didn’t actively lie about who showed up or what they did. They just said “Looks like a couple of million p1ssed off Americans to me, Nigel.”
Which kinda made the US MSM spin effort look like what it was. Active lying.
But hey, The One’s got a plan to fix all that traffic leaving the USA for Britain. Non-profit MSM paid for by the US gubmint. aka newspaper bailout.
Except if you read the story the first and third most visited sites are both BBC, which is hardly doing anything the US media won’t do.
~chip
I had an argument with someone on this site a few months back that centered around the fact that the MSM wouldn’t report on the Car-B-Qs in Paris in the summer of ’06.
The other guy said that he was in the UK and that they were adequately covered there.
I think that the fact that the North American MSM wouldn’t cover up to 2000 cars being torched in riots every night for 2 straight weeks is a good reason to distrust and even ignore the “Gate Keeper Media” here.
That said, if the Car-B-Qs were covered in the UK as they happened, it is a significant difference.
One difference is that the British news people probably don’t think of themselves as part of the Establishment.
Oh I don’t know about that John Lewis. The U.K. is still very class conscious with a lot of wannabes. The BBC judging from what I read in the Spectator magazine, is a major pain-in-the-arse. They are far more international in their news coverage though,sometimes to the point of ridiculous, talking about unknown people in barely recognizable
places, about very uninteresting things. (well at least to us)
Heard a great quote the other day – “the fourth estate has now entered the fifth dimension”.
Heh, heh!
Here’s the Telegraph concluding that O’s out of his depth:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6210152/President-Barack-Obama-is-beginning-to-look-out-of-his-depth.html
When you do not report the ‘real news facts’, sh*t gonna happen. Ordinary people can go on the ‘net’ and get the facts for themselves. They will continue to lose readership until they report the ‘real’ news.
Jeff, thanks for the article. Love that opening:
“It is lovely to feature in other people’s dreams. The problem comes when they wake up.”
Meanwhile, according to Mark Steyn, the Washington Post is losing $1.10 per copy sold. The Lewinsky media has quite a business model, competing rigorously with a large (but shrinking) msm for 30% of the market while aggressively attacking, annoying or boring 70% of the potential market.
Larry Bennett – honestly, not trying to pick a fight with you (re. dogs’ bums or anything else), but the U.K. has a living tradition of idiosyncratic, combative, outspoken journalism that doesn’t exist in North America – it’s pretty much the only thing I admire about the place at this point. If anything, the influence in this case of class (always slippery to pin down) is probably a plus; a significant number of British journalists will happily offend anybody rather than be good worker-bees. Nor is this true only of toffs; read up on Julie Burchill.
The BBC is lefty, but granted that slant its foreign coverage is the only one I know of worth looking at. If Ulan Bator got nuked there’s an even chance it wouldn’t be mentioned on CNN.
Thanks, Gord Tulk, for the Hugh Hewit interview with Michael Ledeen about the massive anti-government rallies in Tehran over the weekend. Ledeen feels that these mean the regime is finished and mentioned that these protests were larger than the 1979 protests. As Gord also mentioned, the North American news is rather quiet about this.
Video footage on BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8262273.stm
Further video showing a significant riot police presence (I understand green is the colour of Mousavi supporters):
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2009/09/day-greens-encircled-riot-guards.html
Well, there is some objective and quality news reporting, editorials and columns that we’d never see here in the Great Satan.
For serious, competent professional writing, I like the London Daily Telegraph, London Times and the Financial Times.
The Brits have their share of “progressive” Toronto Star-like birdcage liner also, such as the London Independent and The Guardian.
As far as broadcast news & their websites, the BBC News is as leftist-slanted as most of the Canadian SDA posters say it is and as leftist as MSNBC and CNN (alias Communist Network News).
Overall though, even their better quality MSM are squeamish about honest writing about Politically Correct matters, e.g. unlimited 3rd world immigration, the domestic dangers of Islamism.
It means people are looking elsewhere for other views – that’s good. Where is the Canadian flag in that graphic? http://tinyurl.com/njult5
You’re right of course, Black Mamba, CNN doesn’t even know where Ulan Bator is; I’m not sure I do. But the BBC seems to have no trouble paying an enourmous wage to a so-called comedian who thinks it’s funny to make a live call to an elderly actor (the fellow who play Manuel on Faulty Towers) and make lewd remarks about what he did with his grand-
daughter. This was months ago and he still hasn’t been fired. That’s not humour, it’s inhuman.
Nice to see the Daily Mail arising from obscurity in the US. They have been consistently Labour/Brown haters and the comments are the best part.
If you want to catch what everyday Brits think of the liberal rot the Daily Mail is the place to go.
You know its a sad day when you see Obama on the Media 24/7. He’s starting to be as much a nuisance as William Shatner. Popping up all over, like a weed in our faces. Stink weed.
JMO