The biggest media problems are lack of content, and some way to index and access what scarce good content there is.
CSPAN does a pretty good job on both, indexing their content on their website. A relief to have content/hype ratio be close to 1.0. Others are hit and mostly miss, combining disinformation with hype, incompetence, repetition. Ben Bagdikian, prof of journalism, measured 15 minutes of actual content among the ads and repitition on an all-news radio station in Chicago.
What is really needed is a website with constantly-updated links that aggregate news links.
Right now, for example I'm listening on CSPAN2 to the author of "Saddam's Bombmaker", Khidhir Hamza from 11/2/00, which is a startlingly informative session, attended by top-notch reps of this issue in the audience. Here's a very smart guy politically and socially, besides physics, & much comes out of these direct Q&A with principals in world events. It sounds like Iraq will have a crude nuke soon, unless they are occupied.
His best insight was - "Iraq was defeated, but not occupied. That is the problem" that allowed ramp-up of their WMD programs with impunity.
Since this was before Bush's election, it leads to the idea of occupation of Iraq as a goal of the present administration strategy. |
