Watch reporters succeed in doing with Tiger Woods what

[Subdivisions]

they so miserably failed to do with the bush administration in taking us into an unjust war and all the other atrocities committed by that cabal. And pretty much anything else of importance since then.

[MineralMan]

1. Why would I care about Tiger Woods, other than his golfing

abilities? Seriously. I might watch a little on the last day of the tourney, but I don't care about any of that other stuff.

As for comparing Tiger Woods and his petty crap to a President of The United States, I guess I don't see any parallels at all.

[Kalyke]

2. I care that his example harms the future wives of boys who look up to him.

Other than that, I couldn't care less about him: his golfing abilities included.

[HipChick]

4. When did he sign up for the role a parent should be doing anyway?

[Kalyke]

8. He didn't, but some children aren't lucky enough to have good parents

and, even if they do, you know as well as I do that teenage boys look up to sports heroes far more than their own parents.

Live in reality, much?

[HipChick]

11. narrow outlook...

seeing as his niece is an up and coming golf player..way to exclude females from the sport

[neverforget]

5. Lesson? He's an example of what not to do.

[MineralMan]

6. How would the boys even know about his behavior if the media

didn't spend an inordinate amount of time discussing it?

[Kalyke]

7. I agree witht that!

[Subdivisions]

3. You completely missed my point. So nevermind. n/t

[MineralMan]

9. No, I didn't miss your point at all.

It appeared to be that the press covers celebrity scandals more thoroughly than administration actions. Is that about right?

Well, in the first place, it's a different group that follows Tiger Woods and other sports stars around. In the second place, far more time is spent in the news media on the doings of government than on sports figures.

So, you're wrong on both counts, and the real question is whether celebrity foibles are even news. They are not.

[Subdivisions]

10. Strike two. n/t

[Orsino]

13. I think you missed it again.

That it is a "different group" that follows Tiger around seems to make no difference. Reporters of more or less all stripes seem to muster courage only to question celebrities on their various scandals. Real power cows them because it signs their checks, or golfs with those that do.

The OP isn't wrong. Had the MSM delved half this deeply into the crimes of the Bush-Cheney regime, we'd all be better off.

[unc70]

15. Tiger will suck up enormous airtime, drowning out lots of other things

Celebrity foibles have always been significant components of "news", same for sports. Remember the old definition of "news" as "what is printed in newspapers". If the NYT, WP, or the AP wire don't carry the story, by definition it must not be news.

Sibel Edmonds and her information about possible high-level government corruption was not news, just CT rantings by the lunatics on the blogosphere.

Some stories just happen (balloon boy) and swamps most other stories. Other times, a group of stories will magically reappear at critical points in the coverage of other stories. On the surface, these stories do not seem in any way related to important news topic, but they are part of a greater marketing or psyops effort.

For example, the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter gets a push back onto the national MSM about a week prior to HCR hearings, votes, etc. becoming the top news story. In some cases there were obvious reasons for the coverage (grand jury appearance), but in many cases there was nothing new in the stories, just slight rewording of a couple of sentences from a story two months prior. For example, a story that Hunter was sighted house hunting along the NC coast was rerun by wral.com and went national again on the AP wire, although the sighting had been reported two months earlier.

Why would this matter? Edwards was already discredited and not part of the HCR debate. Reminding people of Edwards and campaign strenthens the mental link between Edwards and HCR, thus attaching his negatives to their opinion regarding HCR. This is minor stuff, but we are awash in this stuff.

The WikiLeaks release of the video showing the killing of civilians including two reporters working for Reuters should reveal a lot about efforts to limit coverage of damaging stories. So far, a search using Google News shows a few liberal blog sites (e.g. firedoglake) and Aljazeera. Wonder how long they can keep this story contained, particularly in US MSM. I suspect that this will be news in the UK because of the Reuters connection.

Keith or Rachel at MSNBC might well report this. Wonder how Fox will handle this one.

[RedCloud]

12. Who cares if some women slobbered all over that young billionaire?

If that's all this planet has to worry about, then let's have more Tiger Woods!

[Kolesar]

14. The reporters at Knight Ridder* who countered the WMD lie said "nobody likes a skunk"

So they were ignored and treated like sh-- by the whole media/Washington community. Then the story died quietly.

*Jon Landay & Warren Strobel