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« Andrew Sullivan Hears No Evil The RantsWhat Would Skeptics Do? »

Media Reports Semidiluvian Days in North Jersey
2005.10.21 (Fri) 09:57

The Daily Show had a little fun the other night, showing clips of the Today Show in which correspondent Michelle Kosinski valiantly paddled her canoe through the flooded streets of Wayne, NJ — right past two gentlemen moseying along in the ankle deep water.

Kosinski in Deep Water
Original video via Crooks and Liars

Jon Stewart correctly punched up how stupidly Kosinski was sensationalizing the situation, in that the water was mere inches deep and she felt the need to navigate it in a canoe (which drifted off-camera due to the "strong current") — but, presumably only because of a lack of local knowledge, Jon missed the bigger point: despite Kosinski's assertions to the contrary, the town of Wayne is not even remotely flooded.

Some of our own Two Percenters grew up in North Jersey, and we can safely say that the majority of Wayne does not flood — except for the four square blocks in which Kosinski was splashin' around, and a few other extremely localized areas. We still drive through the town often, in our daily routines, and will confirm that there are only a few small areas that ever flood in the city-sized township of Wayne — most notably, those built up around the Passaic River, where the homes are right on the riverbank...so what do you expect to happen there?

Seeing such blatant bullshit on the part of the media — bullshit that we know without doubt to be bullshit, from personal experience — just diminishes our already infinitesimal trust in their ability to accurately and honestly report current events without some kind of sensationalism or spin. As always: are we surprised? No. Just very, very annoyed.

While tracking down video clips and searching for the ever-elusive transcript of either the Today Show or the Daily Show, we came across a few Right Wing web sites that focused on another aspect of this news item: namely, that the Today Show crowed over a piece on how the recent Bush video conference with troops in Iraq had been completely staged, and then segued directly into a sensationalist story of their own which was completely staged. Listen, while we can agree with the Right Wing admonishment about people in glass houses not throwing stones, we don't particularly understand their apparent glee at this revelation.

There are, at the very least, a few important differences between Kosinski's performance and Bush's: for one thing, the deception perpetrated on the Today Show was, at most, a conspiracy of two — Kosinski and the producer of her segment (we're not counting the crew whose job it is to do what they're told) — and, just maybe, the responsibility truly lies only with the producer, who is the primary decision maker in news pieces. The Bush administration's constant lying and evasion tactics are much more organized and wide-spread than that. For another, the narrow scope of the Today Show "conspiracy" is evidenced by the fact that Kosinski's colleagues called her on the obvious bullshit, on the air (check out Matt Lauer and Katie Kouric's snappy reactions), and she subsequently admitted the foolishness of the stunt. Bush's colleagues (the Republican administration) would never dream of calling His Popeyness on his bullshit, just as Bush would never dream of admitting, er, "evildoing."

All that said, did the Today Show engage in sensationalistic media bullshit? Absolutely. Are they guilty of the same thing they had just accused the Bush administration of doing? More or less, yes. But, put simply, so what? In what strange fantasy world does that "vindicate" Bush? It seems to be the same mentality that was employed to defend the American military's torture of enemy prisoners of war: "Hey, Saddam was even worse to his prisoners!" Sorry, but the fact that somebody else, even your accuser, has done the same thing you have (or even something worse) doesn't in any way excuse your own behavior. It's kind of like being on trial for robbing a convenience store and basing your defense on the fact that the eyewitness who caught you on tape had himself robbed another convenience store the day before.

To us, the most pathetic part of the whole Bush fiasco isn't that it was scripted, but rather that even with the script, the president still managed to look and sound like an incompetent buffoon. It's just so hard to respect an idiot, no matter how well he (and any person with whom he comes in contact) is coached.

At the end of the day, both the Today Show and the Bush administration should be lambasted for their sleazy media tactics. But then again, sensationalism and bogus reality television do seem to be what sells these days.

— • —

[Update 2005-10-21: We didn't find the transcript we were looking for, but we found something even better — a site that links to what looks like all of the episodes of the Daily Show in digital format. Of course, we only recommend downloading them if you're entirely sure it's legal in your locality (mmm hmmm). Anyway, one of the quotes we were looking for was Michelle Kosinski saying about Wayne, NJ: "This town has been completely overtaken by the Passaic River." That statement is, as we've noted, a complete crock of shit, and if you're keeping score at home, the quote takes place at about 2:40 into the digital copy of the October 17th Daily Show file. A brief clip is provided here.]


— • —
[  Filed under: % Media & Censorship  ]

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