Time to Re-Think TV News
Analyzing 'The Trump TV News Show' in the Context of the 1998 Film 'The Truman Show'
October 21, 2024 vs 10.21.24 / NYC Government & Politics / DRAFT - News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.
I almost cannot stand to watch TV News anymore. It's like spending a half hour or more listening to well-dressed simpletons say nothing of note - let alone impart important news informing me about what's really going on in the world around us.
TV News Today - The Bucket is Half Empty
The TV News teleprompter readers show endless rounds of accident, crime and sports videos. They intersperse the conversation by sensationalizing celebrity nonsense, in an effort to cross-promote their networks' other offerings. Thus, oftentimes what we're really watching are infommercials for the networks' TV shows and movies or the celebrities who have worked on them, promoting them.
Thankfully that has not gone unnoticed. Only 23% of Americans trust TV News, which is about a loss of the trust of about three quarters of Americans vs years gone by.
VERIFY STAT ABOVE - it's either dead on or approximate
Is it a wonder that trust has fallen so steeply, when candidates vying for the highest office in the land, know that they can lie unchallenged to the entire nation, live on national TV, as we saw in both the CNN Presidential Debate in June and the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate in October?
But what's worse, is that this is not the worst of it.
TV News Orgs & Anchors are as Savvy as Kindergarteners [kids, no offense intended]
For example, in the only presidential debate between Kamala Harris and the Donald, Trump sent all of the TV networks off on a fool's errand into Springfield, Ohio looking for non-existent Haitian immigrants who Trump said were eating the cats and dogs in that town.
Thus, after the debate was over, TV News - instead of talking about the issues facing the nation, which had been discussed during that debate - they spent the next few days broadcasting time-wasting, sensationalized, ratings-grabbing headlines - about a non-existent story.
In the process TV News almost completely ignored the news portion of the debate, including that Harris completely trounced Trump in the debate. Hence Donald Trump prevailed again, in manipulating the TV News networks, which are staffed by teams of well paid, highly gullible, dupes.
Even to this day nobody - or virtually nobody - has acknowledged that they were all played for fools, and sent on a fools errand. The day has passed when TV News was staffed by seasoned anchors, who knew a thing or two about the real world. The TV News anchors today appear to think and act like pre-K school children [hey kids, no offense intended], who Donald Trump manipulates and distracts from what's important, like an uncle distracts his nieces and nephews from his sleight of hand 'magic' tricks.
So, the post-debate conversation wasn't about the serious issues facing the nation, for the most part it didn't contextualize the debate, and ultimately it wasn't informative. Instead, what we saw, is just how ridiculous and incompetent the folks are, to whom we've entrusted one of the most significant conduits of the nation's information system. Instead of calling them TV Anchormen [conveying that they once had gravitas], they should be called the TV Feathermen [conveying that they are shallow, lightweight information sources]. And in the interest of gender equality, the same generally holds true for the females in those roles.
Why aren't we talking about this - https://www.project2025.org
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Time to Re-Think TV News
Analyzing 'The Trump TV News Show' in the Context of the 1998 Film 'The Truman Show'
October 21, 2024 vs 10.21.24 / NYC Government & Politics / DRAFT - News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC. Continued.
This is just one example of how easily Donald Trump manipulates our nation's TV News networks. And because so many of the nation's low information and no information voters rely on what my Mother used to call the 'boob tube' for their news, the American public has grown increasingly uninformed. As everyone knows, if you're using flawed information to make important choices - whether it is for a stock pick, purchasing a home, tying the knot with a spouse, or choosing a president - you're going to pay a penalty for not getting your facts straight by doing your homework. And ultimately not getting what you thought you got, and oftentimes ending up holding a big bad bag of excrement.
So, when the teleprompter readers pretend like they are informing their audiences, by covering Donald Trump dancing for 39 minutes at a rally instead of getting him to answer questions about Project 2025; or by covering Donald Trump flipping burgers at a McDonald's instead of answering the serious insurrection charges levelled against him in court; or repeating - and thus amplifying - lies like Trump's claim that Biden funded transgender operations for high school students without their parent's permission, instead of talking about how Trump increased the National Debt by $8 Trillion [that was up 40% vs all National Debt accumulated in the national government's 235 year history]; or amplifying scare statements like 'Israel will no longer cease to exist' instead of talking about how Trump essentially killed the bi-partisan immigration reform bill [and so on] - they are really being manipulated by the Trump campaign - and they are distracting voters from the issues, not informing voters about them, and ultimately performing a DISSERVICE to the nation - just like wayward social media sources and internet sites.
The result is that many voters - especially those who don't use the internet to fact check the nonsense they see and hear on TV - will go into the voting booth as ignorant or as uninformed as the people they relied upon to provide them with the context and analysis needed to make informed and intelligent choices of the candidates running for the public offices, for which we are voting upon, between now and November 5th, 2024.
The Truman Show with Jim Carrey vs The Trump Show with the Donald
Saturday night, as I was flipping through channels on the TV before turning it off, I came upon 'The Truman Show' starring Jim Carrey. The movie was produced in 1998 and I had seen it in the theater when it first came out. The show is about a child [Truman] who was adopted by a TV Network. The show creator, Christoff, then proceeded to televise the child's life 24/7 on TV in a fabricated town called Seahaven Island, which is where all of the people in the child's life, are paid actors.
As I sat watching, I contemplated the aspect ratio of illusion versus reality, which is one of the issues that has been meandering around in the background of my mind, for quite a while now. Perception versus reality is one of the core themes of 'The Truman Show', but I also think it's one of the core themes of this election. And, as I've described above, it's not being discussed because it's being crowded out by Network TV News nonsense, produced and directed in search of ratings and revenue.
The Trump Image was Borne in Rupert Murdoch's Ministry of Mendaciousness
Donald Trump's image was borne in the media. First as a product of Rupert Murdoch's NY Post, Fox News and the Murdoch Ministry of Propaganda, in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's.
Add LINKs to Murdoch & Trump report series on Gotham Buzz
Was the Apprentice Fake TV or Reality TV?
And then NBC then picked up the Donald, and created the 'Apprentice', which Donald Trump co-produced, and was named the host of the show. They called it 'reality TV', but like most of what you see on TV - it wasn't really real - it was scripted. Now, let me explain what I mean when I say that it wasn't real.
Coming later next week.
