NewsNight practices "Gender Discrimination" both in it's reporting and implied social impact and gendered discipline:
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Beth Nissan presented a 'piece' on clothing donations. It showed mountains of donated items intended for the Gulf Coast but due to the volume it was doubtful and so sadly so that it would make it's destination. More than likely all those lovely frocks would serve as LANDFILL ! The 'piece' featured three young girls as playing in their Mum's attic storage chest. There was no 'boys' shown in this piece. The intended 'moral' to the story was that LANDFILL going into the 'base' of the NEW New Orleans was clean and endearing. What this 'piece' didnt' expand on and should have it that those clothes will more than likely not end up in landfill sites but bundled and sold for recycle to 'child sweat shops' in Mexico.
Erica Hill featured a different 'piece' of a victim family that viewed the president's speech. It was a smile nice for the camera moment to enforce the 'strong and just' president this country has in HIS (NOT THE COUNTRY'S, BUT BUSH'S) generosity as if he was fixing their misery out of the oil derricks on Prarie Chapel Ranch. This 'piece' lacked reaction from the public in general and a focus of what others in the Democratic Party might say regarding the increasing tax burden this country has in the face of constituency pandering tax cuts.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Aaron trying to always be the 'peace maker' of NewsNight sends Beth Nissan on a mission of bonding between '? sisters ?' who see their lives differently. The assignment should she decide to accept it, is to reveal, not herself but a perfectly wonderful and tragic story about a newspaper by the name of "The Sea Coast Echo" of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
Unfortunately she decided to take the assignment and in vicious jealousy practically sentenced this magnificent local newspaper with original and priceless achival editions from 1892. Needless to say the achives were caught in the flood and need MUSEUM curator expertise to preserve the damage documents. They should be a museum all themselves.
The transcript is below but rather than inspiring the Majors like The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times from 'HELPING' with new publishing equipement and a curator to assist in the recovery of the achives, Ms. Nissen perfers to sentence "The Echo" to death.
I would think if nothing else CNN would consider taking a small paper under it's wing and starting a 'Blind Trust Fund' managed by a local bank that would serve to preserve a piece of Southern Americana vital to understanding this country's southern history including volitile subjects including segregation and racism to the extent this area of the country understood it. In my opinion, the survival of this paper should have been secured through efforts by those that would exploit it's story before it was ever aired.
Jerk ! I also don't understand how a 'miracle' occurs when such damage resulted, but, hey I call me crazy but I am not a woman kissing up to a Neocon Executive Producers either.
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This is one of many small miracles on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
RANDY PONDER, PUBLISHER, "THE SEA COAST ECHO": Newspapers?
NISSEN: The delivery of the hometown newspaper. The "Sea Coast Echo." A miracle, because these are the offices of "The Echo" in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
PONDER: You see the water line on the wall there. That's how high the water was here.
NISSEN: Everything you need to put out a newspaper was ruined. All of reporter Bennie Shellbetter's (ph) files. All of the newspapers equipment, computers.
PONDER: I came in the day after the storm. Went to my servers, my computers, thinking I could save some data. No, can't do it. The connections had already corroded. Saltwater.
NISSEN: Saltwater ruined the paper's presses too.
PONDER: This press will never run again. Every metal part in this is already corroded. There's basically not much that can be saved.
NISSEN: Not the shipment of new news print delivered just before the storm. Not the old news print in bound volumes in "The Echo"'s archives. PONDER: Those are the actual printed pages of this newspaper, all the way back to 1892. NISSEN: The oldest volumes were on the bottom shelf.
PONDER: This particular issue's from 1894. This right here cannot be replaced. This is the history of Hancock County right there.
NISSEN: What kept "The Echo" from being history was sheer determination. Four days after the storm, news editor Jeff Belcher assembled a four page special edition, which was printed at a friendly Kentucky newspaper, driven into the area by volunteers.
GEOFF BELCHER, NEWS EDITOR, "THE SEA COAST ECHO": I think it was really important to get it out immediately. You know, television doesn't exist around here right now at all. Radio has been limited. People want to know ways going on.
NISSEN: Within a week, the newspaper's tiny staff had turned the storm-damaged dining room of publisher Randy Ponder into a news room, writing stories on newly purchased computers, laying out the front pages, reporting the best they could on cell phones.
BELCHER: Land lines are down completely so all the phone numbers we had for everybody are gone. When we want to contact somebody, we have to pretty much go physically go find them.
NISSEN: The paper is then printed twice a week on the presses of the "Picayune Item," about an hour's drive north.
PONDER: The second issue, we had eight pages. The third issue, we had 12 pages. And we're going to get that paper back up to 36 pages.
NISSEN: That's going to be hard to do. The paper has lost its advertisers.
PONDER: This was Ricky's Bar and Grill. He was a regular advertiser of "The Sea Coast Echo." Basically, every business on the street was an advertiser of "The Sea Coast Echo." Total destruction on the street. Total destruction.
NISSEN: For now, the paper's being printed on credit, published at a loss. But published on faith that this little paper is important in a community where so many have lost so much.
PONDER: If someone does not get a newspaper delivered on time to their house, they'll call and they won't say what happened to that newspaper, why didn't I get that newspaper? They'll say I didn't get my newspaper, my newspaper. Yes, we're losing money on it, but we're doing what we're supposed to do. I have newspapers if anyone would like one.It's an obligation of the newspaper to continue publishing as long as we can.
NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Aaron realizing the 'error' tried to set it straight, I suppose:
AARON BROWN, CNN HOST: Anderson, the headline in today's paper, the "Seacoast Echo," "Gone to the Dogs, Veterinarians from around the nation come to help Hancock's animals." The "Seacoast Echo." Since 1892, they say, "We're still here. And they are."
I just need to stop my comment here except to say I don't make empty comment for the sake of self indulgence and pity. This entire blog is about the injustice and bad habits of a news agency with global reach. You won't find one word of 'poor me.'
September 19, 2005
Again tonight, Bethy was feathured in a completely irrelevant segment that made a lonely USA postman into a hero for the lack of people to deliver mail to in Waveland, Mississippi. It was hideous. The fact of the matter is HIS Zip Code is vacated. He needs to help in other places and EARN his salary rather than be granted his salary in sympathy. Poor Bethy has been doing 'Poor Me' pieces for so long that is all she knows. To be outraged at the waste of government money in a Postal Delivery Man that could be used elsewhere in a support measure to other Post Offices was just too much of a stretch for Bethy.
And what did the scripted Aaron have to say?
Intro :
BROWN: Coming up on the program -- thank you -- coming up on the program, neither rain nor heat nor hurricane, as it turns out, a special delivery. Because this is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A story now about honoring promises, one eternal, the other nearly so. That hope must be nurtured and that the mail must go through. Here's NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...
Post 'Nissen Piece':
BROWN: In our next hour, the question that still has not gone away. Where is FEMA? And next, where is Rita? The 11:00 update from the National Hurricane Center. From New Orleans and New York, this is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT.
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more to follow ....
