I was hoping someone would do something about this issue in a dignified manner.

I don't know about the Nancy Grace bashing either. A dead fiancee' is a big deal in anyone's life. There are those that don't find that type of happiness again. It is good of her to still call on his life and the fact she still moarns for him 27 years later. However, she should realize the 'content' of her program is a reaction to others and not necessarily a tribute to a long lost love. She might need to work on her approach to honoring him rather than seeing him as a promotion to her cause. At any rate this article in the L.A. Times contextualizes 'the view' at and about cable news. I appreciated the effort put forward here. Thank you.

Regarding Media
Cable's fall from Grace
March 4, 2006

From serious to desperate

For people who think serious journalism is to be valued, this has been a melancholy week, marked by the passing from the scene of two authentic visionaries. One was The Times' former publisher, Otis Chandler — who, along with two equally visionary editors, Nick Williams Sr. and Bill Thomas — transformed this paper into one of international standing and showed print journalism the way forward in an era increasingly saturated with television. The other was CNN founder Ted Turner, who finally quit Time Warner's board in disgust, severing all ties to the cable news operations he virtually willed into being in the face of universal skepticism and outright scorn.
Turner has a loose lip and an unsteady personality, but he never wavered in his belief that serious news has a place on television. The same cannot be said of the corporate apparatchiks now running CNN and CNN Headline and cringing before Fox News' success. They're the ones who have unleashed Grace on their Headline network and defaced CNN's regular report with things like Jack Cafferty's bizarre and incoherently histrionic intrusions into the afternoon news and the increasingly demagogic Lou Dobbs' second rate imitations of a Howard Beale rant.

These desperate acts have been triggered by CNN's inability to come even close to matching Fox in the ratings. The commercial genius of Rupert Murdoch's network, of course, resides in Roger Ailes' intuition that the talk radio model could be transferred to television, thereby avoiding the expense of real reporting while cultivating viewers with a taste for conservative partisanship and, more important, entertainment. Murdoch and his accomplices clearly understand that one of the more disturbing characteristics of the current cultural moment is the insistence of so many people that they have an unalienable right to be entertained during their every waking moment, no matter what they're doing. (It's probably only a matter of time until patients require that their heart surgeons tap dance into the operating room.)
We verge these days on becoming a trivial people.

In a talk to a college audience in Oregon this week, former CNN anchor Aaron Brown mused that cable news has proceeded from promise to decadence because "it is only giving consumers what they want." According to the Ashland Mail Tribune's account of his remarks, Brown said that "CNN spent a fortune covering the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. After two weeks, ratings fell to normal levels. The Fox news channel channeled their dollars into a story about American teenager Natalee Holloway disappearing in Aruba. Fox, of course, cleaned up in ratings and revenue."

Thus, we have Nancy Grace, indefatigable pursuer of missing white women and "host" of a show that — over the past year — has boosted CNN Headline's audience in her time slot by 181% to just over 600,000. That's still roughly 1.5 million fewer viewers than O'Reilly has for cable news' top-rated show.

The conventional response to all this is simply to shrug and attribute it all to the irrepressible venality of frightened corporate executives. The problem there is that you can't have opportunists without opportunity.

Brown put his finger on the responsibility for creating that opportunity this week, when he said, "In the perfect democracy that I believe TV news is, it's not enough to say you want serious news. You have to watch it."

Let's do something really entertaining. Let's imagine that the real — well, really fictional — Howard Beale were presented with Grace, O'Reilly and the whole wretchedly dispiriting direction of cable news. It's hard to envision him saying anything, except:
"I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell:

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

Aaron certainly knows how to get attention. Do it, Aaron. People are hungry for it.

EX-CNN ANCHOR BROWN: "THE NEWS IN THIS COUNTRY IS A BUSINESS"Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown has suggested that television viewers are responsible for the deterioration of broadcast news as much as the TV networks themselves. "In the perfect democracy that I believe TV news is, it's not enough to say you want serious news, you have to watch it," he told an audience in Medford, OR this week. As reported by the Medford Mail Tribune, Brown, speaking to a First Amendment forum, noted that while CNN was spending a fortune covering the 2004 tsunami, Fox News was channeling its resources into the missing teenager Natalee Holloway. The contest, he noted, was won hands down by Fox. The result, he suggested, was not lost on his former employer, CNN. "The news in this country is a business," he said. "You might not like to think of it that way, but it is." He suggested that television, instead of being diverted by scores of late-breaking trivial stories, ought to focus on the 6-10 "really important stories" that occur each day.


HOLOWAY CASE PULLS BIG RATINGSThe Natalee Holoway case continues to attract viewers in massive numbers. According to an analysis of Nielsen ratings, last Thursdays Primetime Live, which featured an interview with Joran Van Der Sloot, the Dutch teenager who is the prime suspect in the case, drew its highest ratings in three years. And on Wednesday of this week, Greta Van Susteren's interview with Van Der Sloot on Fox News Chennel brought her the highest ratings among 25-54-year-olds than any cable news personality, including the usual champ, Bill O'Reilly.

I mean really hungry

Anderson Cooper gets his Mardi Gras on

More Anderson Cooper , CNN , Mardi Gras

Hey, we didn't know Anderson Cooper was such a wild and crazy guy. Look at him rockin' out in his CNN Mardi Gras beads!

We just can't wait to see that video from the Coopster float we bet so many guys took off their shirts for him.

Recently, Oprah has been doing lots of interviews with Anderson Cooper, and she has done many projects with him. A rumor is going around that Oprah and Anderson Cooper are going to be making a movie together.

This is typical conservative backlash. It would seem as though Aaron touched a nerve.

Former CNN Anchor Aaron Brown Blames Public For Decline of TV News
Posted by Noel Sheppard on March 4, 2006 - 11:19.

It appears former CNN anchor Aaron Brown is still licking his wounds. Speaking to a group in Medford, Oregon, on Wednesday, Brown suggested that the decline in television news is due to the choices being made by viewers, and that network executives are now basing their content decisions on what they believe the public wants to see versus what is really important.

As reported by the Medford Mail Tribune: “‘The news in this country is a business,’ he added. ‘You might not like to think of it that way, but it is."

First, Brown blamed TV executives:

“He admitted that cable news reporters and editors have failed viewers by not telling stories that are important, that truly matter.

“‘Cable indulges too often in what amounts to mud wrestling — just two people shouting at each other,’ he said.”

Then, Brown blamed the public:

“However, he didn’t let the casual TV viewer off easily. Because the news is a business, he argued, it is only giving consumers what they want.”

“‘In the perfect democracy that I believe TV news is, it’s not enough to say you want serious news, you have to watch it,’ he said.

“He likened a typical TV night for Americans as a political act where consumers vote with their remote controls.”

Brown used an example from 2004 to make his case:

“According to Brown, CNN spent a fortune covering the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. After two weeks, he said, ratings fell to normal levels. The Fox news channel channeled their dollars into a story about American teenager Natalee Holloway disappearing in Aruba. Fox, of course, cleaned up in ratings and revenue.”

Of course, Brown didn’t mention that most Fox News programs are more highly rated than their CNN rivals, or the possibility that the reason Fox News “cleaned up” in his example is that CNN has been losing viewers for years.

Regardless, Brown had a solution:

“Brown offered one remedy for fixing the news. He argued that during any given day there are only between 6 and 10 stories worth reporting.

“‘We should focus on reporting these really important stories well instead of constant breaking news,’ he said.”

Certainly, nobody in America would disagree with Brown’s desire for CNN to focus on reporting important stories well, especially devotees of the MRC and this website.

As one would imagine, Brown took the opportunity to offer an explanation for his own failure at CNN: “He suggested his eventual demise at CNN resulted from criticizing the network’s obsession with lurid celebrity gossip while short-changing meaningful news.”
Brown also made an interesting analogy concerning the TV networks’ fascination with such trivialities: “He compared such ‘breaking news’ to heroin — it’s good for a while, but will eventually make you feel used and dirty.”

There is some delicious irony in this observation by Brown, for I normally feel used and dirty after watching CNN, especially when he was the host.

(The Drudge Report deserves a hat tip for this report, as does the CBSNews Blog for providing a link to the Mail Tribune article.)