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Staggering Indifference and Cowardice of American Media
Frosty Wooldridge, Denver Post.com
Each day, I scratch my head, purse my lips and stare out the window from 8,000 feet above Denver, Colorado to view that city spread in all directions for as far as the eye can see. Above it, a gargantuan Brown Cloud—loaded with toxic air pollution expands all the way to the eastern horizon. Off to my left, I-70 provides a 24/7 automobile traffic conveyor belt moving into and out of Denver. At night, I watch the I-25 north/south corridor run like a fast moving river with car lights blazing a steady path to infinity.
As I ponder the immense human drama below, I realize American cities from New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco imitate the spectacle below me with even greater numbers than the 2.5 million in Denver. New York ranks fifth in the world with 16.6 million. On the worldwide scale, Mexico City features 20 million, Mumbai, India sports 18 million and Tokyo, Japan hits 28 million.
…While you hear and see horrid pictures of starving children in Africa from church groups trying to “Feed the Children” and reports of 18 million adults and children dying from starvation and related conditions annually, you never hear any reports from the media connecting any of it to hyper-population overload…
(18 August 2009)
The real enemy of newspapers
Mary Dejevsky, The Independent
Ten years ago, I was working in Washington and observed – as a newspaper journalist based in that media-obsessed town could hardly fail to do – glaring differences between the US print media and our own. The first was the vast numbers employed. To look across the newsroom of the legendary “local” paper, The Washington Post, was to be awed, but also to ask what on earth all these people contributed to the puny news sections delivered daily to our door.
The second was the domination of classified advertising – pages and pages of it, mostly local and regional. It was highly profitable and helped explain why the Post could employ such an enormous staff. And the third difference, at least then, was the vast investment – of money and faith – in the internet, with success counted in “hits” and peripheral marketing of brands.
…Which brings us to a final, perhaps decisive, difference between newspapers in the US and and Britain: the special place occupied here by the BBC. Murdoch may yet succeed in charging for his newspapers’ content. But his chances are far better in the US than here. This is not just because many US papers are in an even more parlous state than ours, but because, in focusing on the competition from other papers, the British press has ignored a much greater presence…
(18 August 2009)
Environmental movies have a green problem: money
John Horn, Los Angeles Times
Interest in the environment is heating up as fast as global warming. Contributions to the Sierra Club soared 33% last year, homeowners are installing solar panels, and even preschool children are recycling. At the same time, nonfiction filmmakers are trying to shape the ecological conversation, turning out an abundance of critically acclaimed, Earth-friendly documentaries.
But three years after “An Inconvenient Truth” won over moviegoers and Oscar voters, many new works are suffering the same fate plaguing other intellectually engaging films: moviegoers would rather hug Transformers than trees.
…But because ticket buyers prefer escapist fare these days, it’s not easy being green. Just as audiences have shied away from highbrow dramas, ticket buyers have been reluctant to swim to “The Cove,” a documentary on Japanese dolphin killing that has some of the year’s best reviews. Despite a ton of publicity, “The Cove” labored after expanding into limited national release last weekend. “It’s not what we would have hoped,” says Howard Cohen, whose Roadside Attractions is releasing the film. “There’s no question that we have a challenge in front of us. When people hear there is violence against animals, it’s tough for them to think about it. But the concept of the movie is much more off-putting than the experience of watching it.”…
(13 August 2009)
