Eyes Wide Shut: How the Elephant In the Room Is Now Anchoring the Evening News


One of two things is happening here; a) The leftist activist old media is on a mission to push their agenda and nothing else matters, or b) they really don’t know what they’re doing and the stories just take on a life of their own and like NASCAR , they just happen to take left turns nearly all the time.

I’ll take the former on this one. I’m not going to bother debating whether the activist old media turns left. It’s all well documented here on Bigjournalism.com and elsewhere. Besides, you know what you know, you see what you see, and you’ve figured this out long ago. I do wonder if the activist old media would rather see their businesses destroyed than to admit they have a bias. Perhaps.

What claim to fair and balanced coverage when you believe your purpose is to save the world from Evil Fat Cat Bankers? Bernie Madoff stealing $50 billion leads the newscasts, but the Obama Administration stealing $1.8 trillion from our grandchildren falls on the cutting room floor... [snip]

The ratings don’t lie. Fox News destroys its “competition.” CNN had a 20-year head start and its numbers don’t come close, MSNBC has the power of NBC news behind them its numbers are in the toilet. Do they think Fox beats both of them combined because they have better graphics?

Evening newscasts are in a ratings freefall. Let’s blame that on George W. Bush just because we’ve gone half way through this column and haven’t blamed him yet.

It’s amazing the efforts media takes to try to figure out why people watch, listen or read what they do. The analysis that takes place, the consultants, the dollars that are spent and the effort that goes into research of whether to use Blue #2 or Blue #3 on the graphics would shock you.

Meantime, if they just provided honest, balanced coverage, eyeballs would return to screens.

This is not a fun thing to watch. After spending 30 years in TV news it’s like watching a close friend do a slow crash and burn. Everybody knows it, can see it, they know what needs to be done -- except for the friend. Eyes wide shut. Yes, it is the elephant in the room that the media will never address, and it is an elephant, not a donkey.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard for the media to see it.

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