ON MASTERS OF "JOURNALISTIC" FILIBUSTERS, DOBBS AND BLITZER

SUPERFLUOUS AND WAY OFF-BALANCE

The media seems to be borrowing a page from Congress's book, borrowing the time-honored filibuster.  I've talked in the past about TV "journalists" like Lou Dobbs using their prime-time news shows as bully pulpits for pet agendas like "Broken Borders" and "Exporting America", a filibuster of the news hour for all practical purposes. 

Now Wolf Blitzer seems to be following in Mr. Dobbs' footsteps on his new show and bully pulpit, the "Situation Room".  In recent weeks, Mr. Blitzer has adopted the recent scare over Bird Flu has his own windmill to charge.  The Cable Game blog notes a comment made by Mr. Blitzer before a lecture in Pennsylvania:

"Before the lecture, Blitzer was asked what he feels is the greatest threat to the country.

"No doubt, the war on terrorism is a huge threat," he said backstage moments before the lecture began. "And natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina. But get past them and it's the avian flu. It's pandemic."

He said he's discussed the possible spread of bird flu with health officials on several governmental levels."

Watching him on any recent afternoon, he continues to try and scare his viewers silly with inane comments like "We'll ask our upcoming guest, on what Americans can do to protect themselves from this pandemic".  It'd be almost funny if it wasn't such a tragic waste of our artificially scarce, regulatory-driven and oligopolistic cable networks and commercial air-waves.

This is yet another reason both cable and air-wave spectrum need to be deregulated to accommodate hundreds if not thousands of channels being made available via Internet-driven television (see my earlier posts on this here and here). 

In the meantime, we're stuck with our regularly scheduled programming. 

Comments

[Rajesh Patil]

Very Well said MP,
"This is another reason spectrum needs to be deregulated to accommodate hundreds if not thousands of channels being made available via Internet-driven television"

I also would like to add to this list of businesses that waste the spectrum. The radio sprectrum is full of talk shows that are nothing but a person's opinion.

As once AJ Liebling said "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one" he is 100% right.

Looks like we need a resolution on "freedom of Blogging" before the anti-blogging media/press/publishers go to the court with another lawsuit against a 11 year old kid. Ha!