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solarbird(I posted this elsewhere in response to a question asking about the "We Were Warned" episode of CNN Presents, one focusing on oil issues.)
Personally, I thought it was wretched, a combination of short sound bytes, scary video snips, an overbearing moderator, and inexcusably bad manipulation-music. It presented it as a national-security disruption caused by terrorists and a bad hurricane with good timing, something viewers will automatically see as transient. The few times they touched briefly on other ideas, they were snipped to a level of near-incomprehensibility - Matthew Simmons, for example, was edited down to, what, four words at a time? Maybe? And he was stepped on badly by the interviewer who put words in his mouth because he wasn't offering the pithy soundbites the reporter wanted on tape. I felt that you could pick out some elements of Simmons's research conclusions - but really, only if you already know the topic. Otherwise, it was lost.
The episode's main focus - a drum-beat for ethanol - was really about "how do we change nothing about our lives but drop in an exact replacement for what we have now, preferably cheaper." There wasn't even the briefest hint of the idea of energy return on input, and "conservation" was talked about only in the most general of senses. You can explain concepts like EROI if you want to, and the fact that they didn't even try implies to me that the reporter didn't even have that as a concept.
I mean, honestly, you know a "news" show on this topic has it wrong when one of their Big Scary Things in a month after this combined hurricane/terrorist attack, complete with scare-music and brutally lame spooky video, is the line, "...most Americans will be staying home this Thanksgiving." OH MY GOD Oh My God oh my
goooooooooooooood.
I was also personally offended that they let an oil company PR flak say without any rebuttal that the only reason oil or refinery capacity was limited was because Those Awful Environmentalists wouldn't let the oil companies drill everywhere and build all the refineries they want, particularly since in the latter case, oil company internal memos show that's simply not true, and that the decision to consolidate refinery production was made to raise profit margins in what had been a fairly marginal sector of the industry.
My generous nature is trying to think that they were trying to frame the oil situation as a Scary National Security Issue, which, to be fair, it is. But they botched it by turning it into a temporary crisis rather than an ongoing problem, and they trivialised any solution by offering ethanol (and E85) as a drop-in replacement, no changes needed anywhere by anyone ever and we can grow all the fuel we need forever YAY.
All in all, I think they did the kind of real disservice to the topic I've come to expect out of organisations like CNN.
Personally, I thought it was wretched, a combination of short sound bytes, scary video snips, an overbearing moderator, and inexcusably bad manipulation-music. It presented it as a national-security disruption caused by terrorists and a bad hurricane with good timing, something viewers will automatically see as transient. The few times they touched briefly on other ideas, they were snipped to a level of near-incomprehensibility - Matthew Simmons, for example, was edited down to, what, four words at a time? Maybe? And he was stepped on badly by the interviewer who put words in his mouth because he wasn't offering the pithy soundbites the reporter wanted on tape. I felt that you could pick out some elements of Simmons's research conclusions - but really, only if you already know the topic. Otherwise, it was lost.
The episode's main focus - a drum-beat for ethanol - was really about "how do we change nothing about our lives but drop in an exact replacement for what we have now, preferably cheaper." There wasn't even the briefest hint of the idea of energy return on input, and "conservation" was talked about only in the most general of senses. You can explain concepts like EROI if you want to, and the fact that they didn't even try implies to me that the reporter didn't even have that as a concept.
I mean, honestly, you know a "news" show on this topic has it wrong when one of their Big Scary Things in a month after this combined hurricane/terrorist attack, complete with scare-music and brutally lame spooky video, is the line, "...most Americans will be staying home this Thanksgiving." OH MY GOD Oh My God oh my
goooooooooooooood.
I was also personally offended that they let an oil company PR flak say without any rebuttal that the only reason oil or refinery capacity was limited was because Those Awful Environmentalists wouldn't let the oil companies drill everywhere and build all the refineries they want, particularly since in the latter case, oil company internal memos show that's simply not true, and that the decision to consolidate refinery production was made to raise profit margins in what had been a fairly marginal sector of the industry.
My generous nature is trying to think that they were trying to frame the oil situation as a Scary National Security Issue, which, to be fair, it is. But they botched it by turning it into a temporary crisis rather than an ongoing problem, and they trivialised any solution by offering ethanol (and E85) as a drop-in replacement, no changes needed anywhere by anyone ever and we can grow all the fuel we need forever YAY.
All in all, I think they did the kind of real disservice to the topic I've come to expect out of organisations like CNN.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 05:27 pm (UTC)Besides, the media is quite adamantly -against- enviromental organizations of all kinds, particularly against those that actually have any bite. They tend to care about their message 24/7, unlike the "one enviromental story every 15 days" news cycle they favor.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-23 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 01:53 pm (UTC)Peak Oil is alarming. Though I have my doubts of the good that the doomies are doing with it, it seems to me to be the sort of issue that will walk up and smack the collective 'us' in the face in a few years, if not sooner.
It's a good excuse to get a bicycle and plant veggies, which are good things to do anyway.
Cheers. :)