The 10 Worst Media Moments Of 2008
Jason Linkins
December 24, 2008 05:17 PM
OK, now that we've celebrated all the good things that media professionals managed to grace our world with this year, let's skip ahead to a listicle of lowlights, which is probably what you all really want anyway, since everyone runs on schadenfreude these days and is filled with impotent rage!
Anyway, as before, many of you will agree and many will disagree, and that's cool! Please do! Especially if you want to comment or send an email about it! But note that I've left off a lot of examples that many of you will no doubt feel are obligatory inclusions. For instance, I can already predict an email complaining that Bill O'Reilly doesn't make this list. It seems to me that some examples of stupidity are far too ubiquitous to be remarkable. Nevertheless, the comments are there for all of you to cherish the moments I missed.
TEN THINGS THAT SUCKED OUT LOUD IN 2008, MEDIA EDITION
1. The Economy Kills Everyone
Some greet the effects of the down economy on the media with mockery, some with mournfulness, some with a combination of the two I shall call mournckery. Eventually though, a writer you admire gets laid off, or a reporter you've depended on has to take a buyout, or RADAR Magazine folds and their fantastic web operation comes under the rule of a bunch of gibbering twits with birdcrap for brains and it all hits home. And look, everyone knows that the web is going to solve all of the world's problems, but tell me: how does the imminent failure of, say, New Jersey's Star-Ledger grab you? Worried about that at all? Of course not! Everyone knows that the State of New Jersey is filled with affluent laptop/iPhone owners and their politicians are the most honest people in the ever-loving world!
2. ABC's Terrible Debate
Political debates are all alike; every terrible debate is terrible in its own way. And yet the ridiculous attempt by ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson nevertheless ranks as the supreme example of incompetence. It didn't matter that every single one of their gotcha questions, save Gibson's high-toned bitchery over his investment portfolio, had already been asked 4,751 times: George and Charlie were bound and determined to be the 4,752nd to do so! As such, the entire debate played like something ABC News took all of fifteen minutes to prepare for, right down to the tatty production values and asinine, utterly tone-deaf references to the Constitution. The resulting debate wasn't fair to either candidate and was an insult to every viewer who tuned in. "The crowd's turning on me," Gibson quipped, after it was over. Would they had done so earlier!
Oh, and did Stephanopoulos hypocritically engage in the sort of behavior that he once decried as a political operative? OF COURSE HE DID.
On the bright side, this happened.
3. The Day of Lipstick On A Pig
I don't think a single event managed to sum up the media's inability to distinguish activity from achievement, their willingness to delve deeply into irrelevant minutiae, or their tendency to obsess themselves with transparently stupid meta-narratives any better than they day we all woke up to discover that the commonly used phrase "lipstick on a pig" had become transformed into some sort of sexist insult. It was a sickening and foul display - media professionals on all networks and platforms hurling this loafer of high-toned nonsense at our heads. Naturally, the very premise of their argument was unremittingly false, and the resulting blockstop coverage and commentary was nothing more than widespread platform abuse. Then, as soon as this zombie contagion struck the media, it was gone, and no one ever talked about it again. NEVER FORGET THAT ADULTS - ACTUAL GROWN-UPS! - PERPETRATED THIS NONSENSE.
more...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/24/the-10-worst-media-moment_n_153394.html
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