Separating Media Chaff From The Wheat

The wheat went with Walter... and Hindenburg radio reporter Herb "Oh, the humanity!" Morrison...

Before the Big TV Network News Guns deplaned corporate jets or dehelicoptered in Haiti bitching on-air about their Spartan tent accommodations, I was struck by the surrealism of buff, tight T-shirted CNN disaster vulture Anderson Cooper perched on a hill blazing with TV lights with fleeing Haitians in a Port-au-Prince park below fearing for their lives. Oh, the inhumanity!

There was an odd, macabre disconnect between Cooper and the horrific scene behind him as he looked over his shoulder and yapped about the human tragedy. It reminded me of Rod Serling on camera setting up a ghoulish "Twilight Zone" episode.

Admittedly I saw mere snatches of the coverage this week: I vowed to resist the lure of TV news and the Internet on my week vacation to Palm Beach.

The crop of TV princelings' flowering egos are on a feeding frenzy from shallow roots in a week which saw "global warming" fingered for the Florida freeze that destroyed 30% or more of the citrus crop.  No act of God excuse for 90% of the failed new crop TV talking heads afflicted with terminal brain freeze.

NYT's media maven Alessandra Stanley today observes the obvious: "The line between compassion and self-congratulation is thin on television; in a calamity this vast and acute, many viewers flinch at any sign of reportorial showboating."

As the line between news and entertainment is further blurred. To wit: Anderson Cooper sheds his tight reporter T-shirt for a Ryan Seacrest suit as the Haiti host in a three-host George Clooney MTV telethon January 22. Inside Cable News on the chafing at the other networks forced to feature a competing cable news anchor: "I don’t care how pure Cooper or CNN’s intentions are, and I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that they are indeed pure. It just looks wrong. And looks matter because they shape people’s perceptions.

It’s impossible to ignore the not at all insignificant argument regarding the propriety of having someone who is directly involved in shaping the coverage of the disaster that’s still unfolding in Haiti featured prominently across a multitude of networks, when so many others are also involved in shaping the coverage on networks that will be carrying this telethon. And they apparently will not be featured."

From what I gather, MTV picked CNN's Cooper. Clooney will be in L.A. while Wyclef Jean anchors from NYC. Oh, the hue and outcry if the Haiti host had been Shepard Smith.

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton lands in Haiti today hauling supplies from her luxury Puntacana Resort and Club beachfront estate in conveniently attached Dominican Republic. Hillary and Bill's staging area is their boffo compound next to fashion designer Oscar de la Renta and his wife, Annette (I think that's their pad, left), where the the privileged powerful and rich mingle with neighbors Julio Iglesias (co-developer of the resort with Oscar), and Mikhail Baryshnikov. See CB's why Bill agreed to be U.S. envoy to Haiti.

I can't wait for the first televised live execution...

"The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" The Twilight Zone, 1960. Conversation between two aliens perched on a hill overlooking a town and surveying the death and destruction:

ALIEN #2 "And this pattern is always the same?"
ALIEN #1: "With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves. All we need do is sit back and watch."