WPCNR NEWS COMMENTARY "America's Hotel Rwanda, Continued." By John F. Bailey. September 2, 2005: Now what have we learned about the media coverage that boldly fills our screens as America's Hotel Rwanda plays out in "The Big Hard" with mindnumbing images out of any parent's nightmare unfolding daily. We have to get tough, newsboys and newsgirls of America. You have to stick the knife in harder. Let's take a look at what I've seen:
- Reporters do not know how to ask specific questions any more.
How about just once asking for a specific? Like where are the trucks now? What route are they taking? Is the food loaded, or being loaded? Where is the National Guard coming from? How many, when? When Mr. Brown and Mr. Chertoff refuse to answer specific questions they reveal just how inept they are. You gotta know that if you’re in command. When they don't tell you, they don't know.
Here’s a question for the next quoiffed anchorperson to ask, it’s not enough to look hurt on camera and sigh with sympathy, be a truth seeker, shove the knife in and make these phonies bleed the truth.
This question is for Paula Zahn to ask: How come if you guys practiced for a huge hurricane with a million people needing to be moved, you didn’t figure out that just maybe the roads would be blocked a little, bridges would be out, all communications would be gone, there might be a little flooding, and it might be better to fly in supplies and drop them, and maybe you might need more than 20 buses in three days? How realistic could the training have been? Or serious the thinking. Ask them that, for me beautiful.
- We know you are beautiful. But, hey people are dying out there.
Please lady anchors, let’s not color coordinate the makeup so much and the suits, and leave the lip gloss at home, o.k. Plain white blouse, pulled back hair. No eyeshadow, no lashes, please. Look like you at least have been working 24 hours a day and writing up some questions to ask these phonies, instead of putting on makeup for two hours before air, and like you’re going out to La Circ after you get off the air.
And same for you pretty boys out there. Lose the pink and green suspenders. Time to just look as if you worked at thinking up an interview once in your life, when it really matters. Those poor guys out in the streets, may hat is off to you. I'm not there and you are, and you're doing the best you can.
- Some Reporters are afraid to expose a lie.
Larry King had Good Ol’ Guy Mississippi Govern Haley Barbour had the audacity to tell Mr. King that at 1 o’clock Sunday they had no idea this was more than a Category 1 hurricane. And mindnumbingly, Mr. King did not call him on that utter lie. I knew in Lake Placid, NY, where I was that this was a category 5. People were telling me about it. Mr. Barbour should be whisked out by Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. Mississippi because he is a fool, a liar, and an apologist.
On the air last night, Mr. Brown said he felt the response was moving along efficiently considering the circumstances. Did the reporter ask what makes you think that? What did you expect? No. They let Brown actually say that and get away with it.
- The news producers are not showing the bodies enough.
We keep hearing about floating bodies, but we are not seeing them enough. It was not until last night when folk were dying at the convention center that they were shown. And,. Guess what friends, columnists are complaining about the networks dramatizing things. If it were not for television, the administration would be saying everybody is being moved out and fed and are getting along well. Because of television, they cannot say that.
Show more guys. Use the television eye to show the truth. Because you are not being told it.
5. The networks are not pressing the talking heads for the numbers!
They have to do this: get hard numbers on who is gone and who is not. Hard numbers, running totals so we can measure totals! Press them for it. Please report accurate numbers.
6. The networks are not exposing the photo ops set up by this administration today.
One of the great disgraces of many in this not-to-be-believed response to this disaster were the photo ops arranged by the White House today. Can you believe this crap, ladies and gentlemen?
In the first photo op in Biloxi, President Bush is shown being briefed by coast guard, with Chertoff and Brown with him in Biloxi, and the briefing was way poorly miked.
That clown Karl Rove spent the last two days I allege dreaming up these photo ops to portray Bush as caring and on top of the situation. What horse manure straight from the Crawford ranch.
Do you really believe, Mr. and Mrs. America, and those wonderful African-American heros and heroines and children suffering in the sun, that Mr. Bush did not know what was going on? Why were not the microphones turned up at that briefing?
And the greatest outrage of all, pointed out to me by a former ABC News Correspondent – two Coast Guard helicopters idle in the hangar. Hey, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, why didn’t you ask our peerless leader a question: Mr. President, is this the first time you are hearing about the Biloxi situation as it is now? Mr. President why are those helicopters not flying?
Now on to photo op number: Mr. Bush at the Salvation Army center with a couple of neat black victims with him. Come on? This was even phonier than the first one. I wonder how much the administration paid those two victims to make nice.
On photo op number three, I saw in a photo of President Bush commiserating with a guy on the stoop in Biloxi, white naturally.
Note: Mr. Rove, you screwed up. Mr. Bush should have also walked around New Orleans and hugged some of those brave, patient, trusting black people who are slightly more dirty and smelly than the scrubbed up young black women he hugged for the cameras. You could almost see Bush cringe.
This is a fraud to make you believe this yo-yo cares. I hope you people are not buying this. This is a page out of the Mayor Delfino spin machine. Next thing you know President Bush will be visiting the funerals. Yeah, let’s see him do that. There’s one for you Mr. Rove.
Here’s a question I would ask if I was a reporter. How much time did the White House spend setting up this photo opportunity: 3 hours, 5 hours?
Please, kill the photoops. Spare us. This President could care less. If he cared he would have been on the ground Monday night in New Orleans or as close to it as possible.
I will always remember the day, the President of the United States on CNN TV said, and I quote, describing the events of the last five days as “A temporary disruption being dealt with by the federal government and the private sector.”
I saw him say that. I heard him say that. I still do not believe what I heard.
You cannot make this up.
Yale University should revoke this guy's diploma.
It ranks right up there with Marie Anotinette's "Let them eat cake."
Note: This is the second part of a Two-Part Article.
