Friday, January 29, 2010
OpEdNews: Great Television/Bad Journalism: Media Failures in Haiti Coverage
Via OpEdNews:
CNN’s star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene in Port-au-Prince. A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter from a roof. Cooper helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the boy is disoriented and unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera (but still being filmed by another CNN camera), Cooper picks up the boy and lifts him over a barricade to safety, we hope.
“We don’t know what happened to that little boy,” Cooper says in his report. “All we know now is, there’s blood in the streets.” (To view the CNN story, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvR3m0xMt3Q.)
This is great television, but it’s not great journalism. In fact, it’s irresponsible journalism.
Read the full article by Robert Jensen.
