On the next Your Call, it's our Friday Media Roundtable. This week, we'll discuss coverage of President Obama's decision to lift the oil-drilling ban. We'll also talk about coverage of the rescued miners in Chile and the lack of coverage of mining disasters in the U.S. and Mexico. We'll be joined by Left Turn's Jordan Flaherty, the Washington Independent's Andrew Restuccia and independent journalist Franc Contreras. Join us at 11 a.m or send an email to feedback@yourcallradio.org. Where did you see the best reporting this week? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.
Guests:
Andrew Restuccia, Energy and Environment Reporter at The Washington Independent
Franc Contreras, an independent reporter based in Mexico. He has been reporting for NPR, the BBC, and CBC Radio in Toronto, and Aljazeera Network.
Jordan Flaherty, editor of Left Turn Magazine
Click to Listen: Media Roundtable
Event:
Rose Aguilar is speaking at this weekend's Bioneers conference in San Rafael.
Women, Gender and Media: Changing the Conversation
Sunday, October 17, at 4:30pm
hello your call
ReplyDeleteon the question of chilean miners' drama media frenzy, you asked if 1000 reporters reporting for two months straight on a slowly evolving story (the only news from day to day was the number of feet drilled in the previous day and cat fights between the miners' wives and mistresses) - do you even have to ask? of course it is overkill. And the media insists that the public demands it without asking whether we'd like to hear about all the other issues that go completely uncovered. The whole thing reminds be a bit of the movie 'The Big Carnival'. The fate of the miners was important to me, and the story was compelling, but let's face it - after they located the miners safely ensconced in the emergency chamber which had an access pipe to the surface, and established that they could get them oxygen, food, drink, wine, clothing, medical supplies, sports videos, ipods, exercise equipment, etc etc etc, then it was only a question of how long it would take to inexorably drill down to them. For that I only needed about 30 sec of reporting per day - "The drill is now 70% of the way to the miners and proceeding smoothly, and the miners all still appear to be healthy without major problems. And that's the Chilean update for today." - That's it! all i needed. In fact, despite the record breaking time they were down there, the simple fact that they had an access pipe removed all the tension and excitement of nearly every other mining emergency - which always involved intense uncertainty, and intense urgency, because typically there is no access to the surface. So in that sense, this story actually merited less coverage rather than more. Even the BBC caved shamelessly...