Tragedy, Media and Marketing 712
Magazine and newspaper critics -- like Liebling, Mencken and I.F. Stone -- once wrote bitingly and insightfully about the greed, hypocrisy and warped values of the people who ran conventional news organizations, and about how those traits affected media coverage. This criticism gave us some context with which to grasp and comprehend what we were reading and seeing. But as media became increasingly corporatized in the 80s and 90s, such critics vanished. Media criticism turned into celebrity journalism, with a growing focus on media moguls and TV superstars. Even greedy capitalists like Bill Gates were fawned over by the toughest reporters and critics, when they should have been paying more attention to his business practices.
Every now and then, however, an old and new media issue pops up. It's disingenuous for media gasbags to wonder why the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart from Salt Lake City gets tides of media hype while the kidnapping of 7-year-old Alexis Patterson from Milwaukee gets so little. We know why. The answer has been the same for years now, and only gets more clear with each corporate acquisition of a media property: modern media is about making money, and that depends entirely on selecting stories that entertain, titillate, blow up or confront.
Last week, CNN devoted a whole program to the mysterious process by which some tragedies -- the Death of Di to name one -- get staggering amounts of media coverage, while others -- like Mother Teresa's death the same week -- merit relatively little. CNN's high-minded panelists debated whether racism was the issue: Smart is a rich white kid, Alexis Patterson is poor and black. Is there a double standard? Others suggested Smart's parents were understandably working to promote media coverage, to involve more people in searching for their daughter. But this dichotomous coverage is familiar to Net veterans. Kevin Mitnick got as much media coverage in our time as Al Capone, even though he never killed anybody. Hacking gets vastly more media attention than assault or robbery, cyber-porn more than the newsstand kind. Media are always selective about what makes them hysterical.
It was striking to realize that none of CNN's panelists came close to the simple truth: media are market-driven, not idea-substance-or-content driven. Even the once-staid weekly newsmagazines are as likely as not to have movie stars on their covers, despite the number of important stories worthy of coverage. Cable channels, newspapers and newsmagazines cater to wealthy people -- no matter what color -- because those are the consumers advertisers want to reach. To some degree, this has always been true. But as more media have been taken over by massive corporations like AOL Time-Warner, Disney and General Electric, the process has vastly accelerated. News gets marketed just like cereal. Numbers rule. Ratings shape not only news coverage, but our very perceptions of the news. Such companies don't decide not to cover Alexis Patterson because she's poor and black. Profoundly pragmatic and opportunistic, they'd be happy to exploit blacks as well as whites, if the demographics worked. They don't cover Alexis Patterson's abduction because poor viewers in Milwaukee or elsewhere have nothing to do with ratings, ad revenue or profit margins. Blonde kids from wealthy families in Salt Lake City do.
Even so-called serious media like the New York Times and Washington Post are market-driven, focused increasingly on high-end consumer products spawned by digital technology, and on entertainment and controversy. The Times runs several weekly sections brazenly aimed at affluent second home buyers, wine connoisseurs and other high-end consumers. Stories about redecorating million-dollar cottages don't appear because they're newsworthy, but because they draw readers with money, thus advertisers with revenue.
The Elizabeth Smarts of the world will always trump the Alexis Pattersons. Modern media online or off, aren't steered by editors and producers making moral and creative judgments, but by business conglomerates, lawyers, analysts and market researchers. Their sole imperative: generate controversy (a la Monica Lewinsky), select stories that draw the most desirable readers and generate the greatest profits. This principle is evident in media coverage of computing and software as well, and has been for years. Stories about the Net invariably center on marketing -- what will make the most money, or what might be of interest to frightened and confused parents, rather than what is significant. Look how much coverage child pornography online gets, and how little coverage there is of truly revolutionary techno-stories, from gene mapping to AI. And most Americans have never even heard of open source, let alone had the chance to consider it's many implications. Intellectual property and copyright laws have been re-written, thanks to digital technology, yet these stories get sporadic and incomplete coverage.
Media debates about story judgment and ethics are often this hypocritical and disingenuous, mostly because critics and panelists aren't really free to speak the truth -- moral media died decades ago. From Princess Di to terrorism to kidnapping, stories grow in a hyper-information environment, one which promotes argument and hysteria and, increasingly, filters out the lives of poor, ordinary, or non-marketable people. Modern media takes stories and filters them through an increasingly sophisticated marketing machine.Online, blogs and small sites are freer than conventional journalists to set a broader agenda, but their audiences remain small and fragmented.
Thus, there's no mystery about why Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping gets so much more attention than that of other kids. The only mystery is how long it will take the media -- and more importantly, the public -- to understand and acknowledge the reality of their own new, intensely corporate, value system.
Damn, Slashdotted already... (Score:3, Funny)
"If only H.L. Mencken or A.J. Liebling were still around to weigh in on the kidnapping stories suffusing our media lately. Alas, they're not. They wouldn't even be able to find work these days. And too bad..."
Heh just kidding...
all designed... (Score:2, Interesting)
You might want to read Chomsky [zmag.org].
Re:all designed... (Score:2)
Yes, chomsky has some amazing insights, stats, etc... into modern media but he isn't the answer, solution, nor effect of what's happened site media corporatization (is that a word?).
mc is a good read, and I would recommend it to everyone, but even manufacturing consent was manufactured...
Re:all designed... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Media debates about story judgment and ethics are often this hypocritical and disingenuous, mostly because critics and panelists aren't really free to speak the truth -- moral media died decades ago"
Personally, I find it hilarious when people talk about the 'liberal left-wing' media. The primary news sources for 99.9% of Americans are owned by a scant handful of interests. Hell, one company now owns over three quarters of all the radio stations in the US! And these owners have a number of traits in common: f$cking wealthy, believe in the status quo (hey, they got where they are within the system ... so don't see any need to change it), and, most disturbing, are taking more and more of an active interest in leaning on (or dumping) reporters who dare to question things.
Politics is still fair game. It's almost entirely rhetoric, the two parties almost always work out a compromise ... and, just like the media owners, virtually all politicos come from f$cking wealthy parents (the gentleman in the White House as an example). And both parties are far, far to the right of the average American as a consequence.
OTOH, any reporter who tried to give Nader serious coverage ran into some real problems ... geez, we had reporters threatened here in the middle of nowhere (aka Des Moines (although, to be fair, they consider themselves the moral starting point of the Republicans))
For a really scary example, take those two 'reporters' who were captured in Iraq. Due to travel, got to see the stories both in Canada and the US. The Canadian news (government station) talked about their easily established links to the CIA and Military Intelligence, and showed photos of the 'road' where they crossed the border ... deep trench, rolls of barbed wire on both sides, and signs (in multiple languages, including English) saying 'Don't cross, Iraqi border'. On the US side, nothing. Well, they were 'innocent victims' who 'accidentally' wandered into Iraq. The media in the US has become self-censoring, the joy of any abusive government.
And think about the coverage anyone who questions the current 'War on Terrorism' gets ... either little or none, or is savagely attacked for being unpatriotic.
Re:all designed... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, first off, NY has at 2 free weeklies, the post and the times (radically different styles) and that new conservative-funded rag (I forget the name) so there are 5 papers running there. Considering the rise of TV and general displacement of print media down to 5 from 9 isn't so bad.
Secondly, and more importantly, it's kind of blaming the messenger isn't it? I mean, other news is available to us, obviously, even if it's not spoon-fed from the checkout line. If people aren't reading/watching it, it's because they don't want to. I blame the quality, the timber if you will, of the Average American much more than I do the Media Giants. If you think they're all brainwashed by Murdoch then you're taking away free choice and postulating a rat-in-the-maze/pavlovian world (which I sort-of don't think is how things really are). If you accept that we have choice, and you can't deny the choice exists, then we must conclude that people WANT to read about rich white mormon girls. WHY don't Zines thrive? WHY don't people look to indymedia.org or whatever for their news? Because they simply don't want to.
I know there are other factors, but the fact that Americans (in particular) don't fit in to the image we'd like them to (of free-thinking, compassionate, caring folks who want to know the Truth) we can't say it's Media's fault. It's our fault. Americans.
Alexis Patterson (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you live in Milwaukee? Have you ever been to Milwaukee? Do you realize that for the past two months (or however long she's been missing) it's been on the news almost every day in Milwaukee? There are flyers in most local businesses with her picture. There are tons of things in the paper.
I've never said anything, JonKatz, about your unwarranted rantings, but this is too far. Oh, and by the way, how did you find out about Alexis Patterson? Doing an internet search about missing kids in the recent past and running across some media coverage of the story?
Please...
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Mexico. I have never heard before about the Alexis Patterson kidnapping. Yet when I watch CNN, there's a lot of stories about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. And I have to (somewhat painfully) agree with Jon Katz about this one.
The Big Media tends to take one story and latch on to it, and squeeze it for all the money it can get. It's either that, or the Smarts have been paying afwully huge amounts of money to buy airtime in several media channels and newspapers and such.
It's not like the O.J. murder trial or the Blake murder trial. They're famous people, so more people know them and want to know what's going on with those cases. In the Smart case, they're taking someone unknown and making her famous. And it's not "the people" deciding it. It's the studio execs. It's Ted Turner. It's people with a desire to earn more money through selling advertisement to more viewers.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2, Interesting)
1: you (or a good portion of your pictures/footage) have to be attractive (this is required)
2: you have to be "normal", no extremist views for you
3: you have to identify as "that could be my kid/husband/me!" to a great majority of the add-buying populus.
the only way to avoid this is to kill like 30 people, but even then you will only get a few days coverage before your trial if you don't fit those rules.
You will also notice there will be only one contriversial issue covered in depth at a time, this is so everyone knows what to make idle chatter about the next day. If it makes good idle chatter they will continue running it until it gets old. Yes it's disturbing, but really how much do you *really* care about these cases anyway, unless they happen in your neighborhood.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2)
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2)
Being closer to STL, and not being a news junkie, I've heard plenty about the Smart case. I'm sure it will continue to be featured heavily on the commercial news outlets here, unless another person affiliated with the Cardinals dies.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:4, Interesting)
His point was not that there was no media coverage, but that for Alexis it was very localized, while for Elizabeth Smart it was highly covered nationally.
Oh, and by the way, how did you find out about Alexis Patterson? Doing an internet search about missing kids in the recent past and running across some media coverage of the story
You make a valid point, but if you go over to CNN.com, and look on the front page, I can find all of the info I want for the Smart kidnapping. That is the coverage issues he is referring to.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2)
Slashdot algorithm excerpt:
if numberofsubmissions is less than 5
then
run katzbot
fi
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I live outside Milwaukee and this media junkie hasn't heard word one about Ms. Patterson's kidnapping. I also live outside Salt Lake and the airwaves are filled with Ms. Smart's story. What Katz says in this case is spot on.
I wish people such as yourself would stop and think before posting a knee-jerk anti-Katz response. Sometimes he does say stuff that's worthwhile and this is one of those times.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2)
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2, Insightful)
The same commentary [jsonline.com] showed up in the Milwaukee Journal in early June. (note, not from Milwaukee, I think an Elizabeth Smart article actually had the link, but I can't find it)
The Washington Post wrote about it [washingtonpost.com]two weeks ago.
This isn't really insightful. It's doesn't really have a /. slant to it, or any new information - quite a few people have said it before. A Google search [google.com] for alexis patterson media coverage pretty much tells all. I'm sure you could get more by playing with the search terms.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2, Insightful)
Truth is, I watched each news broadcast about Elizabeth Smart with two conflicting emotions. "God, that's horrible. Poor little girl." And "Wait a minute. She can't possibly be the only kid who has been kidnapped since the last kidnapping news story I saw. Why the heck is she getting so much media coverage...?" Which was answered shortly after that. "Oh. She's overprivilidged".
It's no news that kids with money are more important than those without. It's no news that kids from affluent families are more likely to get media time, if only because the parents know how to publicize things.
You cannot say that Alexis has gotten nearly as much coverage as Smart. I mean.. C'mon. Barely a day passes without Smart's picture being on *Something*. I hear her name mentioned more than I hear about Israel, more than I hear about terrorist threats, more than I hear about things that happened in the city I'm living in.
American media is insane.
-Sara
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never said anything, JonKatz, about your unwarranted rantings, but this is too far. Oh, and by the way, how did you find out about Alexis Patterson? Doing an internet search about missing kids in the recent past and running across some media coverage of the story?
Err...I don't live in Milwaukee. I haven't the slightest clue who Alexis Patterson is, or rather I didn't until she was referenced in this article. This is the first that I've heard of her or her abduction.
Neither do I live in Salt Lake City. I live in Ohio. I've heard of Elizabeth Smart. I not only know who she is, I can tell you exactly what she looks like and what she was wearing when she was abducted. I can tell you what her abductor was reportedly wearing the night of the abduction.
Not only that, I can name each of Elizabeth's siblings, her parents, and even her uncle. I can tell you what suburb of Salt Lake City they live in. I can tell the name of the handyman who has done construction work for the family and is now a chief suspect. I can tell you what he was paid for his work. I can tell you what kind of car the handyman drives. I can tell you that the handyman lives in a mobile home nextdoor to his in-laws who also live in a mobile home. I can tell you that he has pet cats.
I can tell you that Elizabeth's younger sister has told two different stories of what happened the night that Elizabeth disappeared. I can tell you that there was a statewide search during which someone claims to have seen a suspect matching the abductor's description acting strangely in a wooded ravine area, but that further investigation turned up nothing. I can tell you that police have investigated false sightings of Elizabeth as far away as Texas, and that there was also a nationwide manhunt for a material witness who was found after a week in a hospital in the eastern US.
I have no interest whatsoever in either of these abduction cases. The chances of me ever needing to use any of this information is so far beyond miniscule as to be laughable, but it has all been imprinted in my head, and I don't even watch the news that much.
Milwaukee may be saturated with news of the abduction of Alexis Patterson, but that saturation doesn't even touch the surface of the nationwide saturation of news regarding Elizabeth Smart. This is in addition to the local saturation in Salt Lake City that I'm sure is every bit as bad as that in Milwaukee. Your post is seriously off base when considering the vast difference in the scale of media hype.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed, I had heard of the SLC chick days if not a week or so before I had heard of Alexis. Hell, I know NOTHING about Alexis other than it's "some girl missing" but I DO know that the SLC chick was hunting down some random guy that drove a few thousand miles on his car, from watching CNN two days a week for a half hour at home during lunch.
IMHO, neither should be more than a blurb in the news. Yes it's a tragedy, but didnt some planes just crash in to each other? Didnt some pilots just try to fly a plane drunk?
It's unfortunate that once a story like this breaks, they MUST continue to keep it in the press all of the time because the housewives of the world need to find out whats happening to their new weekly obsession.
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2)
E. Smart gets nationwide coverage while A. Patterson is unheard of outside Milwaukee. So, as long as she's still *in* Milwaukee, she has a chance of being found I guess.
Well, as a wise man once said, "We have stone-age minds and space-age business suits." Or something like that...
Re:Alexis Patterson (Score:2)
I also heard almost the exact same words about the Smart vs. Patterson covered on NPR a few days ago. Almost sounds like plaugerism.
And before I start getting flamed, I was baptised a Mormon although I no longer consider myself a Mormon. A great many of my extended family members are Mormon, and they, as far as I know, are good people as I am sure many Mormons are. Some of my extended family, however, has had to deal with their underhanded tactics of lies and threats as the church attempted to control their lives.
A worse story (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A worse story (Score:2)
How in the world can you say that someone how a "moral and ethical duty" to report something, and they have no "moral and ethical duty" to save human lives?
The first example also has nothing to do with your backup information (wire tapping, "Pinktown", etc) so why include it?
It's obvious from your post that you have a disdain for the military in general and so your respone is biased against them. How else could you say "I have a "moral" and "ethical" duty to report the news, so I'll watch these country-men of mine be slaughtered."
Here's an exmaple for you that i think you'll have a little bit tougher time arguing with:
You're a reporter filming some footage of a neighborhood that has been having a lot of crime lately. Your purpose there is to try to capture some of that crime on video. As your are filming, a lone woman starts walking down the street. As she comes closer, you notice that she is your mom/wife/daughter (pick which one you want). You also notice that some very untrustworthy guys are starting to follow her. You start to believe that she is about to be raped. Using your flawed logic, you, being the "moral and ethical" reporter, should just allow this to happen as you have your "duty" to "remain above and outside whatever is happening". So, I guess you would sit there and film your mom/wife/daughter being gang raped.
Or maybe you'd try to get some help... who knows?
Katz, you're getting your news from /. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Mitnick story makes no ripples when two airplanes crash into each other over Germany and American bombs mistakenly take out a wedding party instead of our bearded foes.
The news and hype around hackers that you speak of is only visible in dark reaches of the Net like ZDNet and Slashdot. CNN, MSNBC, and the other Major internet news outlets relegate these stories to the Technology page where they rightly belong.
Bias (Score:2, Flamebait)
That book came out about the beginning of the year, and recieved quite a bit of press and publicity a few months ago. It's an insiders view at CBS of what makes news become news, and what doesn't.
From the Publisher
IN HIS NEARLY thirty years at CBS News, Emmy Award- winner Bernard Goldberg earned a reputation as one of the preeminent reporters in the television news business. When he looked at his own industry, however, he saw that the media far too often ignored their primary mission: objective, disinterested reporting...
Talks about what he believes to be "liberal bias", although I think Katz's description is better than the term Goldberg puts on it.
If you are interested in this topic, you may want to give the book a read.
-Pete
(affiliate link above...just so ya know.)
Re:Bias (Score:2)
Re:There is no "liberal bias", just plain ol' bias (Score:2)
Taking the only example I can recall offhand, NPR (commonly referred to the reactionaries as National Pinko Radio) regularly cites the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, as well as interviewing the thinkers who fill their tanks. Last time I checked, the points of view expressed by these two orgs (Cato in particular) is much more liberTARIAN than liberal, and as such are closer to Republican/conservative points of view. On the other side, NPR is not typically citing Pacifica-style truly liberal anti-corporate points of view. They may be left of Newt Gingrich, but given the entire spectrum of politics, they are much more centrist than liberal in their bias.
The same goes for most other media outlets. If they were truly pursuing a leftist liberal agenda, they'd be biting the hands that feed them, and they know better.
"News" brand information product (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't solve the problem, but it does highlight the phenomenon. Anyone?
Re:"News" brand information product (Score:2)
Essentially, some governing body would determine that the following categories of information were news, and other categories were "features". Sports scores and actions are "news", but the Bob Costas-style features are just features, not really news. Political wrangling is news, but what the First Lady wore to dinner and who she talked to is a feature.
There are a lot of judgment calls that would have to be made, and some mechanism for producing those calls would need to be standardized. If someone was doing it on a subscription basis, I'd buy.
Re:"News" brand information product (Score:4, Interesting)
Even something as simple as being forced to reveal the initial source of the story. How many 'news' stories today are nothing more then press releases, or marketing hype from a company that's been latched on to by media and re-spun to look relatively neutral.
Perhaps some other rules should be set in place by this oversight body. Any new show, magazine, paper or other meda that follows these rules will be able to use the trademarked name of something like 'Real-NEWS'
If a TV station where to follow these rules, they could have one broadcast of the news that is certified. They could run another show where they report all the fluff they want, and still call it news, it just woudn't be certified. A paper could just insert a 'real-NEWS' section and put all the real news there. The rest of the paper could be the standard fluff. My idea for some rules (in no particuar order):
Re:"News" brand information product (Score:2)
Howard Kurtz's Media Notes (Score:2)
Offspring co. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure that I understand this statement. What makes Microsoft an offspring company? Or Amazon for that matter?!
Re:Offspring co. (Score:2)
Because their business-model is "give it to me baby!"
Re:Offspring co. (Score:2)
the only porno scare I see is at goatse.cx
also:
Magazine and newspaper critics -- like Liebling, Mencken and I.F. Stone -- once wrote bitingly and insightfully about the greed, hypocrisy and warped values of the people who ran conventional news organizations...
what are you saying here? what I read is that you are a little jealous of their "talent" - I read that you would like to be considered of their ilk. is this acurate?
Sometimes a story is a metaphor for other stories (Score:2, Insightful)
In Lady Di's case, the story is really about drunk driving. We use a story to discuss bigger things. People take to a story because it touches on bigger issues. The OJ trial for example. Of course many of these stories are about celebrities. That is so we can all relate to them.
JohnKatz article summed up in 1 line (Score:2)
yes, the answer was obvious
and it was depressing that someone would spend a whole article writing about it
on a related side note... anyone ever watch CNN headline news anymore? That drastic stupid change they went through makes me want to shoot my TV.
Here's a real life example I've seen several times now:
"Hey, thanks for watching CNN Headline News! We'll leave you with music by 'Insert Lame Band Here' who just happened to stop by our studios to play for us"
Oh... and I bet they just happen to be signed by a AOL/Time Warner record label.
WTF is up with that. CNN Headline News used to be a somewhat reliable source of important news. Now they lead with how Britney Spears is starting her concert tour, and then 18 minutes into the half our, they mention a little blurb about bombing in Israel or something
Re:JohnKatz article summed up in 1 line (Score:2)
I don't watch CNN so much, but I do hit their web site a few times a day. What I've noticed lately (and I say this at the risk of being labelled as anti-semitic) is an overdose of news coverage about the violence in the Middle East. Sure, a bomb goes off and it's "headline news". That makes sense. But for several days in a row during the last week the "headline story" on the CNN website has been something like, "Bus drivers fear more bombings" or "Israelis live in fear." Well, no shit. But was there another bombing that day? No. Were there certainly more newsworthy articles to have as the headline story? Yes. But they all got bumped to a lesser position so that CNN can run a "headline story" about an Israeli bus driver who is afraid that his bus will be the next to blow up. That's not a "headline story". That's not even news. That's simply common sense.
This article could use a link. (Score:2, Informative)
I have one question (Score:3, Insightful)
Also recently Salon had an article on US Military Contractors buying and selling under age girls in troubled areas in Europe (Bosnia etc.). Would any western news firm pick up this story and let the world know that the Army isnt full of people who would lay down their lives in the blink of an eye for freedom and against oppression ? In this post 9/11 world, I would suprised if that news story ever got out. MSNBC ran a story on this a few weeks back, but didnt touch on the Military Contractors aspect. And then we wonder why everyone hates US ?
Being rich, being powerful, being able to garner the most media coverage seems to be the only way now to live.
Around 1800 people lost their livelihood because of some assholes in Worldcom. Would CNN/MSNBC etc. care a fsck about those people. Nope, we linger upon the luxurious indulgences of the CEOS and CFOs, but doesnt care jackshit about the ordinary guy who got laidoff and now has to find a job to support his family.
Companies screw each other and the public over and over everyday. I just heard a story of the root cause of all this being blamed on Clinton and Ben&Jerry. The reason being, Clinton and his Govt mandating that a CEOs base salary should never be over 1 million, but doesnt impose any ceiling on the amount of stock he could receive. Which leads to cooking the books and then laying of hundreds of people because the company cant survive.
Its a shitty world out there folks. And its not getting better day by day.
Re:I have one question (Score:4, Informative)
Regarding the Afghan wedding, there's been coverage at least on CBS, NBC, BBC, New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC, and undoubtably others but I don't have the time to monitor that many more news sources than I already do. MCI Worldcom has been a similarly large story, including pointless short interviews with just-laid-off ex-employees (Gee, they're frustrated. What the hell did the reporters expect?).
And that "story" regarding Clinton is even more absurd, considering that the Fed. government doesn't have the power to cap base salaries.
Not a salary cap, a deduction cap (Score:2, Interesting)
So once the salary deductions for CEOs were capped at 1 million dollars, corporations would lose exorbitant amounts of money if they paid the CEO over that amount. They'd be taxed on money they had already spent (kinda like taxing someone on the money they spend on their mortgage, or taxing a farmer on money he spends on fertilizer). So instead, they began giving CEOs stock options. Those could still be deducted. The problem is, the only way the stock has monetary value is if the CEO sells it, and he/she only makes money if it sells at a high price. So they begin fiddling with the books to drive stock prices up so they can actually make some money (nevermind the fact that capital gains taxes would still rip them a new one, but I digress). If CEOs were still paid in cash, there would be less incentive for them to 'cook the books'. And if they hadn't seen the President of the United States get convicted of a felony, disbarred, and then come out of it making millions off of speech deals, with a 12 million dollar book advance, and a 200 million dollar slush fund for his library... Well maybe they wouldn't think they could get away with it to.
Re:I have one question (Score:2)
Is it because their lives are not important as the ones who perished on 9/11. If its confirmed that US fscked up by dropping the bomb, would the 40 men,women and children get any justice as well ?
As others have pointed out, there is definitely not a lack of coverage, but that said, the difference is that their lives were not intentionally targeted, whereas the WTC lives were.
Re:I have one question (Score:2)
I beg to differ -- I've had the news networks running in the background all day as I work from home. All of the stations seem to be nothing more than detailed speculation on what happened...
After spending a week in Paris, I wish I could get the non-us version of CNN however.
Re:I have one question (Score:2)
Dateline is 01:50 p.m. EDT (1750 GMT) -- 2 July 2002, lead story headline is "Searching for Answers", lead sentence is "Afghan and American officials headed to an Afghan village today to begin an investigation into why U.S. planes mistakenly struck a wedding party, killing about 40 people and wounding about 100."
You, my friend, are a dumbass. We're not all out to get you, you're just that paranoid.
on the front page (Score:2)
I agree that the media has problems, but keep your arguments sane.
hype (Score:2)
Let us not forget that news has exactly one purpose: to sell advertising.
Gah! (Score:2)
The real tragedy here is that we've got a pabulum-spouting geek who writes for a news source that can't even be bothered to spell-check headlines implying that H.L. Mencken or A.J. Liebling couldn't fill his shoes.
That makes me sad.
After all that, you didn't even answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Ugh, somewhat off-topic (Score:4, Insightful)
"Even greedy capitalists like Bill Gates..."
It seems that capitalism is wrong in america these days. Nobody is preaching socialism, but everybody is dissing capitalism. Yes, Bill Gates is a capitalist. But come to think of it, so am I. And so are almost all Americans. The real problem with Bill Gates is not that he's a capitalist, and not that he controls a monopoly (let me remind you that having a monopoly is not illegal), but that he illegaly uses his monopoly.
Just because Bill Gates was successful doesn't make him an eeeeevil greedy capitalist. Mind you, he's given billions to charities.
To quote/paraphrase Stalin: (Score:2)
What is the alternative? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do we make news organizations strictly non-profit groups? Would this work in the T.V. and radio markets? If the stations were making no money running news, would they bother, or just re-run Seinfeld episodes so we could hear about "nothing". Easier to do in the print and internet larket, but still not easy. Those entities need to make enough money to keep the presses running and the data lines live.
In the end, news as a free market entity means that we can all get it. If it weren't for advertisers in a newspaper, the cover price would be quite significantly more than $.50 or so. It may be manipulated by corporate America to a certain extent, but it is also flowing with idealistic people that want to tell us something. Until we can come up with a cheap system that doesn't need sponsorship or government intervention, this might be the best system on the planet.
Re:What is the alternative? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and support media watchdogs like Spinsanity [spinsanity.org] and their ilk -- groups that care about correctness, rather than transparently carrying out political vendettas.
Reduce Barriers to Entry - Increase Competition (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the current problems with the media that it's turned into one big oligopoly and it's sleeping with the FCC so it can retain its status.
All media companies need a conduit to deliver thier content to viewers/users, whether it's the airwaves (TV/Radio), Cable, and now Internet (via Telephone for most users).
The FCC controls ALL of these conduits (With the exception of some private networks).
One Solution
1. Regulate/deregulate the FCC's control so that the costs of running a TV channel, radio station is virtually nothing, thus introducing competition.
2. Regulate/deregulate the Baby Bell's exclusive control over the telephone infrastructure to facilitate the deployment of broadband technologies. Maybe seperate service from infrastructure.
Agreed (Score:2, Interesting)
You could argue that 24 hours of several different networks is just too much time to fill with real news, but surely they could use it for more in-depth reporting on real issues. Maybe they could actually educate the public somewhat. Didn't that use to be their job? News should not be entertainment, except in the sense that learning stuff is entertaining.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have a network or two just for little white girl stories if that's what people want to watch, but there should be SOMEBODY other than public radio/tv to provide actual news and important information.
It's like radio stations - okay, have a few top 40s stations. But can't we have a couple that play quality music too? Other than public radio?
I guess these are just ends that the free market goes to automatically, but it sure is depressing. There must be some way to correct the problem without introducing bigger ones.
Re:Agreed (Score:2)
If I had a local news station, I'd pepper the regular programming with commercials saying things like "Are you sick of hearing about Chandra Levy? We are too! Tune in to Channel 4 News at 11:00 PM, now 100% Chandra Free!"
The funny thing is, I don't know anybody who doesn't complain about this kind of coverage. You'd think that a TV news station would catch on and realize that they could gain marketshare by not beating a dead horse (or intern) and advertising that fact. It really is sickening that 10 minutes of every national newscast has to be dedicated to a local interest story simply so that they can say "there's nothing new to report in this case today, so we're just going to keep re-hashing the same old shit we've been telling you for days."
Nothing personal... (Score:2)
No flaming intended and nothing personal, but just now I read through it, continued surfing and suddenly I thought "hell..what was that story on slashdot again?" That only happens with JonKatz stories...
CNN is to news as the WWF is to sports (Score:2)
Greta van Sustren and Larry King are really just providing a televised version of the National Enquirerer.
Noam Chomsky's Mass Media Critiques (Score:2, Informative)
A quote from the zmag chomsky archive [zmag.org] website says "The authors identify the forces that they contend make the national media propagandistic -- the major three being the motivation for profit through ad revenue, the media's close links to and often ownership by corporations, and their acceptance of information from biased sources."
Chomsky's writing don't touch on the processes that make one young girl's kidnapping more
Quick summary for those who didn't read (Score:2, Insightful)
2) Mainstream America has an attention span of 20 seconds.
3) A vacuum of media critics.
I pretty much agree with the above, though recently you see the right and left sides of the media attacking/criticising each other. Limbaugh and Fox News vs. CNN and the Networks ("Let's get ready to ruuuuuummmmmmble!"), but this is even probably more suited for marketing rather than fair criticism. The fairest critic I've found, even though he is a conservative, is Sean Hannity. Obviously there are others that I just don't know about.
I think that the first two points really emphasize why web news is popular. For anything in depth you have to go someplace, while maybe biased, that at least doesn't leave out large chunks of the story and the background of the story. This depth is not sexy (ad friendly) nor quick to read and understand (shiny toy).
I can't stand TV news anymore; "3 dead in sex farm explosion", "look at all the pretty people", sports, weather, "feel good story about Foo-Foo the super bunny". Newspapers aren't much better. There are more stories and they are longer, but some of them read like a 14 year old wrote it.
For once Katz is pretty well on target, but could use some word chopping. More is not always neccesarily better.
all out of proportion (Score:2)
Hey Jon (Score:3, Insightful)
Moral Media didn't die (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that the Sept 11th jingoism has died down and it's starting to be a non-terminal offence to express discontent versus the powers that be, you're starting to see the creepings of independent thought show up even in CNN. Up here in Canada, CTV [ctvnews.ca]'s been doing it for a while. But even then there's a huge under-reporting of stories that would knock the comfort zone of the average person.
The basic problem is this -- any media outlet is a slave to the mandate of its publisher. This isn't really new, it's as old as newspapers themselves (it used to be that if you wanted to be a politician it was a shrewd move to found your own newspaper). So, if you've got nothing but biased media out there, the only way to really inform yourself is to (a) check up on all the biases and try to develop your own conclusions from them, and (b) realize that there's no substitute for actually being at the scene of the event, or at the very least talking to someone who is.
People who critique the media as having a bias often make the mistake of trying to sound like it's forced upon them, when really, you can choose to go out and find different information from a different source. Some options include:
ZNet [zmag.org]
The Guardian [guardian.co.uk]
The Independent [independent.co.uk]
Le Monde Diplomatique [monde-diplomatique.fr] (English version here [mondediplo.com])
Tom Tommorow [salon.com]
It also helps in times of conflict to go to the media outlets or websites of your political enemies to see what they're saying. It's amazing how they often take as gospel a premise that is completely different from your own. It's also amazing how often the exact same coercive techniques are used by both sides. Makes you wonder if there are average citizens over there are pissed off at their media as much as some of us are at ours.
By the way, I know I went off on a bit of a tangent, but if you click on any of the links above you'll see minimal coverage of the Elizabeth Smart case. There might be a story in there at some point to tell everyone how it all turns out, but nothing like the usual CNN sensationalism. The point is, if you don't like your media, don't go back to it -- go elsewhere. It's not like we have battered wife syndrome or something.
(or maybe we do???)
No terrorism = no interest (Score:2)
Remember a month or two ago when a guy flew an airplane into the Pirelli building in Italy? Remember how it was such big news because it was an airplane hitting a building and looked like it was terrorism?
Remember how quickly it fell off the news radar when it didn't seem to be terrorism anymore?
Wow (Score:2)
Basically you have to remember that everything has an adgenda, while it may not be intended everytime remember everyone has their own biases. First their is the advertisers who want to sell their products. This means a happy worry-free audience, do you think Nike wants you hearing about poor starving kids in sweat shops or 20th Century Fox wants you hearing about DeCSS and the DMCA? Back in the early days of television news cigarrette companies sponsored broadcasts and they were specifically prohibited from showing people smoking cigars! I don't recall what they did about Churchill, whether they didn't show him or they bent the rule.
Couple that with the fact that they also want to keep it interesting. Not only do they know that the public licks up anything scandelous they judge the story by their own interest, recall that these broadcasters tend to be quite rich, they tend to know many of these people and as a result find stories about people and places they frequent even more interesting then we do. For those of you from Canada do you know that Peter Mansbridge (the anchor of the countries major newscast) married Cynthia Dale (a famous Canadian actress). Considering my topic I realize it's kind of odd writing that (they mentioned it in the newscast one day and it was sufficiently creepy to stick) but it's meant to show that to a certain extent we are seeing the world from the eyes of movie stars and executives.
As an aside I'm sure many of you are aware that the editor of the Ottowa Citizen was fired for urging the Prime Minister to resign in an editorial (the Prime Minister and the owner of the newspaper, a huge media conglomerate, are freinds).
Pot calling the kettle black? (Score:2)
Notably absent from your list is Columbine and 911.
Oh wait those are the ones you use. It all makes sense now.
Re:Pot calling the kettle black? (Score:2)
Yah in this post 911 world people blow shit way out of proportion and try to compare everything to 911.
Guess what 911 happened it over. Now can we stop relating every movie, video game, and cd that comes out to 911?
Let me explain this to you (Score:2)
There is a logical explanation for this, and it doesn't require racism, conspiracies or any other nonsense. First of all, "News" is about reporting things that are "new".
Child disappearances are rare, but not totally unknown. The difference between Alexis Patterson and Elizabeth Smart is that Alexis is a straight disappearance. There's nothing unusual about that beyond a child disappearing.
Elizabeth Smart, on the other hand, was taken AT GUNPOINT FROM HER HOME with her sister witnessing the act. How often does that happen? Almost never.
John, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Everything doesn't have to have a sinister reason behind it.
Funny... (Score:2)
What i dont understand (Score:2)
During the chandra levy spectacle i would have to switch the channel every time the news mentioned chandra because i had already heard every thing they had to say ten times and did not want to hear it again. Same thing with oj simpson and monice lewinsky.
I can imagine that many other people are like me.
So why does repeating those things ad naseum make media companie smoney?
Missing something (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Missing something (Score:2)
Couldn't agree with your post more, but just as an addendum, and for the life of me I can't find this chart online, the Church of LDS is second in overall monetary value of organized religious institutions(The Catholic Church w/ a value near 4 trillion, LDS just under 1 trillion in worth.)
But more than that, and this was my suspicion all along while reading the Katz piece and follow up comments, is that Alexis Patterson doesn't look, how shall we say...'media friendly?' (i.e., she's Black).
While a missing child is a missing child, White, Black, or Green, I have a strong suspicion that somewhere in the national media's line of thinking the following exchange took place:
"Elizabeth Smart--White girl with blonde hair...a lot of people will see this as an abhorent tragedy versus Alexis Patterson...yep, another Black girl is missing, so what else is new."
It's tragic that people think that way, but unfortunately, it is the way thigns are. I only hope both are found.
Katz has it precisely right (Score:3, Interesting)
About 4 years ago, during the height of the Clinton hate pander, a 12 year old kid called the on-air host of an MS-NBC program. I was watching: it was about a minute before 1 PM. The kid got through the call screeners somehow.
The kid asked why the immense coverage of so inconsequentual an act as Clinton-Lewinski, when so many more imporant things were happening -- especially the 24/7 coverage of the MonicaStain-NBC network.
The host, John Gibson, who is on FoxNews now (of course), looked the camera straight in the eye, and said:
Kid? (disbelieving shake of head) You're watching this show right now, aren't you? We put on the air what you want to watch. If you didn't watch, we wouldn't show it. We have to make a profit. We have to make money, and this makes money. We have to go to the news now.
(exit, with kid trying to respond as he was drowned out by Gibson).
--
I knew news was dead in the U.S. when I heard that said so blatantly on the air.
I respect the old guard at CBS news. They still hold the line on credibility. The others have become, as Katz said, magazines to sell stuff to rich people. And to impress their neoconservative bosses, the news journalists are censoring themselves every day. It's the only way to get promotions, and money.
News, as a profession, used to be low-paying work, with the ownership separate from the editors. Now the head of GE wanders into the NBC election coverage headquarters on election night to make his wishes known. Journalists are being canned for criticizing the president, and need I remind you all that criticizing the President was a 24/7 religion 3-10 years ago?
As for the kidnapping cases, you bet. Here in Chicago, kids are kidnapped every month on the south side. News will not cover that, not the innumerable shootings, stabbings, and rapes that occur. But a single beautiful white teenage girl from the suburbs, if SHE'S hurt, there is endless concern. It's so obvious.
Boy, can I relate... (Score:5, Interesting)
The media is not very interested because she's with her mother. That's not sensational enough. Obviously they don't know the history.
Please mod me up, and please visit my website: FindSabrina.org [findsabrina.org]
The difference between Smart and Patterson (Score:5, Interesting)
The Smart story strikes a vein that makes it especially newsworthy. She was taken from her house in the middle of the night. To have someone stolen in your own home like that strikes a nerve in virtually everyone.
Whenever I hear a "vanished child" story, regardless of the details it bugs me. But my wife and I just had our first child a little while ago (ask gorbie, he's seen the pics). The Smart story is the kind of thing that creates a primal fear in every parent. The home is supposed to be the one place that's secure. When it's not, that, sadly, makes it more newsworthy. I don't relate to what happened to Alexis Patterson the way I relate to Elizabeth Smart. It's not because Alexis is black, or because she's from an inner city. It's because I have a home, and I have a child. And one of the biggest fears I can imagine is waking up in the middle of the night to find your child missing and a window open.
To get much scarier than that, you'd need to be living a Steven King novel.
Re:The difference between Smart and Patterson (Score:2)
I'm sure this happens all the time, though.
Jon Benet Ramsey immediately pops into mind. The girl was dead. They had her body. At that point, they didn't even know who to point the finger to. Heck, they still don't. Yet that girl's face was plastered all over the screen daily for a looooooooong time. That was a case where public insight had little to no value.
She was just a cute little girl with a memorable face, and everybody's heart went out to her. That actually got more media attention than Elian Gonzales did. In that case, the future of a 6 year old boy was at stake.
sex sells (Score:2)
sex and celebrity are what tabloids thrive on, and the rest of journalism is fighting a losing battle to hold it's head up about the muck.
Jon, lets review... (Score:2, Insightful)
From the site""Pandering to Fear: The Media's Crisis Mentality" Every day newspapers and television warns us of new, unsuspected dangers in our complex modern world--from Alar and asbestos to cyclamates to the Audi 5000 and the Suzuki Samurai. With the world apparently getting more dangerous all the time, we have to wonder how life expectancy keeps on growing. ABC's John Stossel will discuss what the real risks in modern life are, why the media seem to hype unrealistic fears, and why readers and viewers fall for it. "
Thank you for your time. I appreciate the effort, but I appreciate and value the efforts of the original authors even more. Lest we forget Doris Kearns Goodwin and her misdeeds.
Yellow Journalism (Score:2)
I don't think anything has really changed. I suppose if we could dig into it, we'd probably find the media has always chosen to report what sells more papers or what titilates/scandalizes the public. Occasionally you find the truth in the papers, but often a great deal of important information is left out because the subject matter is so dry that even lies won't improve the story. So I'm not surprised that this is still going on, and I suspect it will continue to do so. The nice thing about today is that there are now so many alternate news sources so that one has the freedom to gather all the information and make their own educated guess on what is really important and what is just superficial fluff designed to sell papers.
Media is targetted that people who are NOT rich. (Score:2, Informative)
Elizabeth Smart missing is a tragedy because...? (Score:3, Interesting)
If, on the other hand, Smart were a homely little black girl with crooked teeth and a left eye that just kinda pointed out into space, a band of wandering perverts could abduct, violate and dismember her, and get only a small fine for littering when they disposed of the corpse.
Kids go missing every day. The cute ones get press.
Yeah right Jon (Score:2)
The point that some "stories" get more coverage than they deserve is well taken, but shamelessly trying to tie in a tech angle to this is just stupid.
Milwaukee vs Salt Lake City? (Score:3, Interesting)
Profoundly pragmatic and opportunistic, they'd be happy to exploit blacks as well as whites, if the demographics worked. They don't cover Alexis Patterson's abduction because poor viewers in Milwaukee or elsewhere have nothing to do with ratings, ad revenue or profit margins. Blonde kids from wealthy families in Salt Lake City do.
A quick search shows populations of these areas:
Milwaukee, WI (city)
Population (1990): 628088
Per Capita Income (1995): $25,906
Salt Lake City, UT (city)
Population (1990): 159936
Per Capita Income (1996): $19,995
So what exactly is the point of comparing crimes in these cities? Milwaukee is poorer than Salt Lake City? Hmm. Demographics? Money? Race? What exactly is Jon saying here? Sadly, nobody (including him) knows. I found the above information in about 10 minutes on the net, I am sure a "professional" journalist could come up with some better facts to back up his opinion. What was that opinion again?
Re:Milwaukee vs Salt Lake City? (Score:2)
Personally, I think the story of Elizabeth Smart's disappearence has at least something to do with the publicity it has received. Not many kidnappings occur with a definite witness (the sister) and in the home while the entire family is there.
I agree with John Katz that media is made up of shallow whores with more bias in their story selection than their actual content.
Wrong Market (Score:2)
And that's what it's all about...
Mencken's hardly a paragon of non-bias... (Score:3, Insightful)
Jon has his head completely up his keester if he thinks Mencken was somehow a non-biased, non-sensationalistic journalist. Quite the opposite; it was his stances and deft, witty articulation of them based on fact as well as innuendo that made him a great journalist. Hell, it was the age of yellow journalism. Mencken, Winchell et al were always looking for any story that could make the most people plunk down a nickel and pick up a paper.
Take the Scopes trial alone. Mencken, goes down to the south and turns a stupid little rigged case into a media feeding frenzy, makes it a battle between the theory of evolution and the forces of ignorance, when it was really nothing much to get jazzed about. Like the Smart kidnapping business the story was in the telling, not the facts themselves.
Thus it has always been, thus it always shall be, and thank God for it. The news needs readers to survive and to get readers, like it or not, you have to entertain them in one way or another.
It's an old saw, but if you don't like what's out there, don't watch. Turn off CNN & pick up the papers of your choice, which have overall had relatively little Smart coverage. If CNN lost even just 10% of its audience during times it was covering this thing it'd drop it like a bad habit -- it's the fact that the opposite occurs that keeps it on the air and that's our fault, not CNN's. It's your eyes that create the market, and advertisers are paying because YOU are watching & reading. That, Jon, is a good thing, not a bad thing, because it makes the responsibility for what's on the air ours, not AOL/Time Warner's. Stop paying attention to the crap and it'll die.
Another Kidnapping Story (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to make it on-topic: there was a flurry of media attention paid to these two girls back in May, but it seems to have died out in the wake of the Smart case. Perhaps no new clues means no new press attention.
Beofre you trash Jon Katz..... (Score:2)
Personally, I see it this way...if a company wants to provide entertainment, that's fine....just don't (attempt to) pass it off as hard news. I believe that the big news orginizations do just that....pass off fluff as news, then whine when someone calls them on it. After all, they have "tradition"...RIGHT?
I used to work for a TV station and something that a friend who worked in an ENG (mobile news) van said is most approriate here: "You're only as good as your last live shot". In other words:
SCREW TRADITION....you should be judged on what you're putting out now..as opposed to the good stuff you did then....
Also...consider this: If the public didn't tune in to this crap, they wouldn't be broadcasting it.
Return of the Katz - the silence is broken (Score:2, Insightful)
Well our soothing reprieve is over. Katz was silent [slashdot.org] from Jun 04, '02 12:15 PM to Jul 02, '02 01:15 PM. Nearly a month. Anyone care to hypothesize what he may have been doing during that time?
A Few words... (Score:2)
This phrase was immortalized on The Simpson's, among other places (Grandpa saying, "I am the Lindbergh baby" to distract the Feds.) Why is this phrase famous? Because the media of the time was saturated with the Lindbergh kidnapping.
So.... when was H. L. Menkin writing agian?
jon katz? (Score:3, Insightful)
10 missing or abducted children in the last month. (Score:2, Informative)
According to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Score:2)
We're to blame, not the media.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's not their fault.
It's our fault. They're in the business to make money. They do that by selling advertising. And the prices they get for selling advertising are determined by how many people are watching.
If we didn't watch, they wouldn't feed us this garbage. All they're doing is feeding us what we want. They're giving us loads and loads of the stuff we wanna see. We apparently LIKE to watch about sex scandals, missing wealthy attractive children, and celebrity deaths. Because they boost the ratings. And ratings mean money for the news sources.
If we want to change the media, it has to start with US. Don't like it? Don't WATCH it. Turn it off. If enough people do it, the ratings will suffer. The media will adapt, and feed us what we DO watch. Only when we reward responsible journalism, by watching it, will we get more of it.
Seeking out news (Score:3, Insightful)
This is as much about culture as it is about media. I have nothing against infotainment... I read Slashdot, after all. But that isn't the same thing as information. Yet any of the myriad of people who pick up, say, the Boston Herald every day think that they are getting their daily dose of vitamin I... They don't make the conscious realization that it is just a copy of People on cheap paper. If Americans had any cultural context and the desire to understand rather than be told they would have snapped up copies of any paper covering the assassination lists Presidente Fox is holding and the overhaul of the Russian criminal justice system set to take effect this week. But we don't, so we don't.
There is nothing wrong with the periodicals mentioned in this piece... they just need to be seen in their proper light. Yelling at the previously core newssources just because they chose to sell avon instead of news won't solve the problem. Moving enmasse to reliable news sources will.
How does that prove or disprove his point? (Score:2)
I don't understand how, if Smart were found tomorrow, anything would change about the motivations of the media folk who covered her apparent kidnapping. It neither proves nor disproves anything about Katz's main point.
Re:So what's your point? (Score:2)
Hmmm Interesting point. The problem with what you're saying is that people are justifiably concerned. He was acquitted, not found innocent. IIRC, they couldn't prove or disprove he did it. In which case, the public has a right to know what the details are.
What if he remarries? At least now, the new wife would know about the accusations made about him. If it had gone quietly like you suggest, he could hide it from her. That'd be bad news if she ended up dead.
Re:Major Flaw (Score:3, Insightful)
It has gotten worse precisely because the number of organizations who actually cover the stories has decreased dramatically. News budgets for items like bureaus and reporters are being chopped. Interview time goes to news organizations with the widest spread, not the best reporting. It is getting worse. You can put on your blinders but it's still happening.
Your viewpoint is like saying, "Back in 0 A.D. technology was still advancing. Today is nothing different," without noticing that the scale and speed of technological change brings a very real qualitative difference to humans who don't evolve at the same rate as technology. Today, the scale, span, and decreasing number of viable media outlets gives this issue the same type of qualitative difference when compared with the media in the days of William Randolph Hearst and the ilk.
Astounding (Score:2)
Nothing new (Score:2)