Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Miles O’Brien slam CNN as the ‘Wal-Mart of journalism’ (via Raw Story )
On the latest episode of his StarTalk Radio Show, Neil DeGrasse Tyson spoke to former CNN science journalist Miles O’Brien about the failures of modern news reporting — particularly at CNN. As the interview began, O’Brien joked that CNN fired…
This post was republished using Repost. Please read it on Informed Comment directly: https://www.juancole.com/2014/05/degrasse-obrien-journalism.html
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“Neil deGrasse Tyson Blasts CNN for Giving Equal Time to Science Deniers”
All it takes is a comparison of the CNN website headlines this morning which is mostly fluff and “human interest” as opposed to, say, Democracy Now’s website which is covering (e.g.) Net Neutrality, the continued persecution of Occupy protesters, and further NSA shenanigans. The time is long past to rely on traditional news sources, including the so-called “serious” one’s such as the PBS Newshour. CNN is simply going to the place Neal Postman long ago said the traditional media were taking us.
What I really hate is that in my lifetime it has been my great privilege to meet many intelligent people with all manner of perspective about how to approach and resolve various fundamental and important issues that affect all of us. And the scope of opinion given to us on PBS is Brooks and Shields? Excuse me? Where are the voices of the true progressives, of the greens, the socialists, of the occupy movement, of those who favor a more cooperative economic and social model, yes, even the few remaining communists. Instead we are limited to false dichotomies and false equivalencies and a very narrow range of views.
And for my money, in terms of false “balance”, no one cut to the chase quite as well as John Oliver and his rightfully derisive calling of bullshit on the false equivalency argument concerning human induced global warming a couple of weeks ago. Frankly, as a farmer, the GOP playing games with our food supply (because that what ignoring this threat has been) is not funny or cute – it is going to kill us, period.
Prof. Tyson is right that the climate change issue is reported as if it were a garden variety political issue with Republicans and Democrats as the contesting political positions, but it is of course a scientific issue, and the state of the argument in the relevant scientific fields is that alternative views have been explored, considered, argued, critiqued and finally a consensus, i.e., agreement, has been reached on the question. The process of argument has proceeded to a successful conclusion. This is the result that should be reported if indeed accuracy is a concern (but this part seems to have been forgotten). To then put on a petroleum industry hack with an obvious axe to grind to comment on the question is unserious and dishonest.
I was going to say that you wouldn’t bring on a Christian fundamentalist to comment on the latest research on e.g., the role of cis-regulatory genes in long term genetic evolution, but then I noticed that Bryan College officials (yes, that Bryan) in Tennessee have “decided that professors had to agree to an additional clarification [as part of a ‘statement of beliefs’ that professors have to sign as part of their contracts] declaring that ‘Adam and Eve are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life-forms [sic]'”. (NYT 28.5.14)
Hey journalists, the real world on which you are reporting includes a lot of intellectual dishonesty and incompetence that needs to be called out as such and dismissed in any true and judicious account.
Labeling CNN and the rest as the capitalist corporate media is almost all that need be said. CNN, CBS, FOX and NBC, in all their iterations and the like are fast food outlets for “news” and just as nourishing, substantive and healthy for a thinking person as Mickey Ds.