From A Demon's Nest of Sentiments

[thewayne]

Unenlightenment forms the granitic foundation of all decision-making on Earth

Comments

[silveradept]

And the few times when the politicians say she's misquoted them or taken it out of context, Dr. Maddow usually repeats the quote back to them and asks what's the issue. Cue foot-in-mouth.

[thewayne]

I remember a Maddow Moment where she was interviewing a Congressional Wannabe from the Pacific Northwest, I don't recall his name, but he was a real nutter. If it's the guy that I'm thinking of, he had ties to the medical community but I don't think he's a practicing physician. Anyway, she called him out on a serious inconsistency, and he denied it, and she rolled video of him making the statement, and he continued denying it! It was amazing to watch, she re-airs the footage occasionally as this guy likes making the news.

[silveradept]

I think that was the person I was thinking of as my example. It takes a certain set of something to deny your own words on tape.

[porsupah]

TV news is a pretty terrible place to be, these days, and not just in the US. (Not that professional journalism as a whole is exactly thriving, but there are at least rising stars amidst the weblogs, notably Marcy Wheeler, and the FireDogLake crew) Even in the UK, the erstwhile Question Time's long been populated by panels of pundits rather than experts, and even Newsnight's primed their guests expecting one line of questioning, only to have something quite irrelevant launched upon them instead - very disappointing, as Jeremy Paxman is/was a top-notch interviewer, quite dogged in his determination to deflect pre-prepared soundbites in pursuit of an actual answer.

Jon Snow is one of the few who stand out now, letting Channel 4 News punch way above its weight. Al Jazeera sometimes has some quite illuminating perspectives, as well.

We now have access to so very much information - but the populace all too often doesn't take much advantage of it all, let alone the problem of information overload.