A great loss

Intense public reaction to death of Prince makes me wonder how many more such episodes we are going to have before we burn out. It seems to me that we have a potentially very large number of musicians and actors and other public figures who symbolize an important aspect of life for millions of people, any of whom could spark such a reaction.

I think it's pretty obvious that we (some significant minority) are reacting so strongly to the loss of Merle Haggard or Prince because we can gather electronically and talk to each other about our feelings. Famous musicians and actors have died since there were famous musicians and actors, and news of the loss has been pretty much instantly available for over a century. But now we get to talk together in some semblance of a conversation.

But how many times will we (some significant minority) gather and mourn the loss of some important part of our collective experience before we take it for granted that if we live long enough we will experience such losses many times?

There is one thing that really bugs me about this phenomenon. Television news is in very sad shape as I found out the last month or so. Thanks to the American election, American cable news is almost entirely focused on the horserace aspects of the campaign. The viewer is lucky to get five minutes in an hour of non-election news, and there is hardly anything about other countries. Canadian cable news is a little bit better but not much. And when in a given week just about all the nonelection "news" is about the death of a celebrity, it really shows how lazy and contemptible these "news" organizations are.

Most resonant phrase I saw on the Web this week

"The unreported world," used by Al Jazeera English to characterize what they try to cover.

In my experience, a pretty accurate characterization.

And the cry goes up, "Link to the primary sources!"

Bad Science shows the relevance of all our academic fussing about sources, by showing how journalists distort science stories.

One of the things that's wrong with the world today, 1

From Digby at Hullabaloo:

The Village In Full Effect

by digby

Tweety's [= Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball"] latest promo:

I think if you watch our show, you're hearing the American family arguments. It's as if you're sitting at a dinner table with your conservative uncle and your liberal relatives and they're arguing with each other and you're hearing both sides. You're hearing the interesting American attitude about things. You're hearing the flavor of our country. You catch it. I don't think it's a calm event. I think it's a noisy event. And I think at the end of the argument you'll know where the American people are.

Really? Are you related to wealthy TV celebrities, political operatives armed with talking points and professional politicians all of whom live in the same place, went to the same ivy league schools and whose professional and social advancement depend upon each other? Does listening to their canned repartee really give us insight into "where the American people are?"

Le hameau de la Potomac in all its glory.

PBS Newshour

I have said some harsh things about American journalism on this blog, so I feel an obligation to praise it when I find a good example coming out of the USA. I am very impressed by the honesty and hard work that goes into the former Knight-Ridder news service which is now called McClatchy, but some of you already know that. Now I have a second example --the PBS television Newshour.

What I find noteworthy in this daily broadcast is the fact that they devote long segments to the in-depth investigation of material that would not make it onto, or not be handled well by, too many other news outlets. Tonight for instance they spent at least five minutes and maybe closer to ten interviewing the French finance minister. That was followed by the last segment of the night, five or 10 minutes on the imminent publication of Mark Twain's autobiography, which he embargoed for a century. Both were very good, and given enough time on the screen to make the reports more than just trivia.