Thursday, June 6. The day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
There’s fungus among us. Scientific American interviews shrume expert Merlin Sheldrake.
Ariana Pekary left MSNBC with a bang. On the way out she noted the insidious effect cable news has on civil discourse. This is as true for MSNBC as it is for Fox. There are financial incentives driving it. People don’t want to be challenged with complex news. They want to be comforted by having their views reinforced. Cable news producers know this and, well, here we are. Also, two University of Illinois journalism professors used Twitter to analyze the network structures of top national journalists and they were “intrigued to see that there was a television producer cluster, where Fox was in the mix with ABC and CBS, which might explain why we tend to see a lot of the same faces on TV news programs.”
Jonathan Swan, usually a print journalist, delivered some of the best video journalism anyone’s seen in a long time when he interviewed President Trump last week. His measured push back and persistent followup questions kept the president on his toes. Swan’s expressions were added entertainment. And this overlaid soundtrack put one part of the interview into comedic context.
On that exchange in the Swan interview where President Trump says our coronavirus death rate is “lower than the world,” White House coronavirus advisor, Dr. Fauci, has weighed in. Opposite. “The numbers don’t lie,” he said.
And I have a tough time pronouncing Adirondack so I shouldn’t talk, but then again, I’m not on TV with a prepared speech I could have reviewed and practiced. It’s the epi-tome of laziness.