Access journalism has become the ends, not the means. |
Can't address the big fact that the bulk of life is taking place under the pressure of an onslaught of images. |
I think there's a desire for results, a hard-bitten realism. The primary goal is not some sort of symbolic display, or some sort of posture or attitude, but results. If that's what it means, then I applaud the turn to practicality. Today the far right is in charge, and I don't think you can create the possibility of broad-based radicalism until you defeat the far right. Put the center in power and then you have the possibility--or the luxury--of radicalism. |
I think we have a national attention deficit disorder, ... Because we're so itchy. We're changing the channel, the camera is constantly moving, the edits are flying thick and fast. |
It's not a bunch of green-haired kids with punctures in their faces. |
It's too hot to handle. He was scathing toward Bush and it was absolutely devastating. They don't know how to handle such a pointed and aggressive criticism. |
People who feel that their ways of life are threatened or feel generally anxious or confused about the way things are going are disposed to look for causes. |
We are in the midst of a tremendous global revolution, ... and the consequences are on a scale that are hitherto unprecedented. |
What happens is journalists get a whiff of blood in the water. A wounded president — Reagan over Iran-Contra, Bush over Iraq — is suddenly fair game, they think. The previously hesitant pack at last finds courage in numbers. |
When bin Laden bombed the embassies in '98, what TV and print were obsessed with was not terrorism -- but Monica Lewinsky. |
Who of us does not recognize that the life we live, however larded with brave talk about values and thought and ideals, is not actually a life dedicated to immersion in the endless torrent of images, songs, sounds and stories? |
You're in the news business and you're in the business of arresting the attention of people and prying them away from what they take for granted. They must read the next day's paper and so on. While the desire to gain attention is a dynamic in journalism, it's not the only one. The predominant dynamic since journalism's inception has been the desire to capture the attention of people. Another dynamic is the extension of democratic enlightenment. |