Silly media, hyperbole is for kids.

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By Ravenhawk | November 18, 2006

It’d be nice if we could go back to the good ‘ol days where the news was known as “the news” not “the media.” You know, back when they actually reported things that happened instead of trying to make everything as dramatic as possible.

Over at Washington State University a few days ago, the College Republicans group set up a big chain link fence with signs on it supporting the building of the wall on the border with mexico. When later asked why they did this instead of trying to set up a forum on the issue for public debate, they said that no one ever attends those and they wanted to get people to pay attention or something…
Quite frankly, if you set up a fence getting in my way to class, I’d be tempted to push it over. Or at least share a few obscene words. I’m not a fan of people with pushy views.
Eventually some counter protests showed up, they argued, and lots of people were getting upset. Some students went and fetched a teacher who came and tried to break up the fighting. He attempted to talk to one of the republicans. Eventually he came to the idea that they were too interested in “playing” with their camera that they weren’t really paying attention to him.
He asked them to turn in off and they refused. More arguement ensues, the students refuse to listen to the staff, the teacher lets vulgarity slip and eventually leaves.
When I watched the news last night and they mentioned this event, they were talking to one of the republican girls. They barely mention what actually happened at all, and focused pretty much entirely on the fact that he said “S-bag”
The girl being interviewed tried to act like she was horrified at what had happened. Like he had greatly offended her. She called him racist, which I found ironic, considering the content of their wall.
And all the while, she was grinning from ear to ear. It was obvious that this is exactly the kind of attention that they had hoped to garner. And she was overjoyed to be on television.
Meanwhile, the teacher apologized for “adding fuel to the fire.” The republicans interpret this as an admission that he was wrong to intervene. More likely it was an apology for giving them an excuse to pull in the national media. Outside of the school area, the teacher, as well as his family, have been threatened, harrassed, and targeted by racism.
None of that was mentioned in the news. They just talked about what a bad, horrible teacher he was for calling them S-bags. I’m still trying to figure out what s-bag is.
The only insult with an s and bag I’ve ever heard is scum bag. But there’s no reason not to say that on television…
In the end, the part about this that drives me nuts is that the nation news corporations are merely acting as conduits for partisan activism. Their job is to objectively report events. And I saw no actual reporting of events happening.
I don’t watch american news very often for this reason, but it really is about time the problem was fixed. The question is, will it?