The state of televised news…

[Kevin M.]

There is a major news event occurring today, and every televised news outlet is handling it the same way, which is to say wrongly. Each has their own hosts and their own pundits speculating and pontificating instead of reporting. They are operating under the assumption that a live shot outside the courthouse is newsworthy, even though they aren’t reporting / can’t report on what’s occurring inside. 

So instead of reading the indictment aloud and fact-checking the charges with eye witnesses, video from Jan 6, or doing anything resembling journalism, they are guessing whether Trump will have his mugshot taken. 

It’s nothing less than disgraceful. One of the most historic days in American history, and it’s being covered by teams of morons. 

All the broadcast outlets (including Fox) interrupted regular scheduled broadcasts… for what? To show Trump walk down the stairs from his private jet? And to get that shot, they pointed cameras at a parked plane for how many minutes? Hours? What is the f-ing point? 

Where is the substance? Where are the facts? Where is the journalism? Any jagoff can point a camera at a building, but that’s not news. And these morons are all going to drive home from work today patting themselves on the back, genuinely believing they were a beneficial part of history, when in actuality they were an embarrassment to the nation. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

I don’t want to defend TV News, but I think this is a bit harsh. Images of a past President arriving at federal court to be arraigned probably are newsworthy, and this particular defendant is unconventional enough that he could do or say anything at any point, so probably worth following him.

While the history books will likely record 8/3/23 as the relevant date, the actual breaking news date was 2 days ago, 8/1/23, when the Indictment was announced. On that day the TV News I watched did do much of what you suggest; they read large sections of the indictment (I strongly recommend that every American read it for themselves, it is quite digestible by laypeople), and had experts explain and analyze it. I am not sure about your suggestion that they interview witnesses to fact check the indictment - for the most part the criminal behavior alleged here occurred in public and we are all witnesses. What they did effectively I think is draw the lines between the well known behavior and why what may have appeared at the time to just be whacky, desperate behavior by Trump extremists was actually a criminal conspiracy. There were some crucial allegations that were not of public behavior, but the witnesses (really, witness) was not making himself available for fact checking. But again they did a good job explaining why the only person who could be the prime witness against Trump is Pence.

A day like today can really only be something of a circus; absent something extremely unusual there will be no news made. But I thought the cable and broadcast tv newscasts I saw Tuesday (namely, MSNBC, CNN and CBS) did a competent to good job covering an actually breaking and complex story.

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[Kevin M.]

If today can only be a circus, don’t televise the circus. Put on a rerun of the day you say the networks did read the indictment aloud. If they got Tuesday right, it doesn’t excuse them getting Thursday wrong. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Jon Delfin]

and the other shoe to drop:

is there really no other news to report? things that have actually happened, or are happening?

the good news is, if you watch one hour of coverage this evening, you don't have to watch cable news again until Monday evening at the earliest

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[Kevin M.]

Two people pleaded guilty to billions of dollars in cryptocurrency fraud… in the same courthouse. The morons couldn’t be bothered. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Dave Sikula]

I couldn't disagree more with this. 

Maddow proved the other night that 23 minutes of reading and recapping the indictment was deadly, and she was touching on just the highlights. To spend 60 minutes or more reading and annotating it would have been illustrated radio and sets clicking off across America.

As for fact-checking the indictment, that's why they have the trial, and we got a good portion of it during the Jan. 6 House Committee sessions.

I'll agree that tracking Trump's progress from Bedminster to DC was pointless and overkill, but when all the nets are locked into a pool camera view of the courthouse exterior, there's not a lot they can do in terms of visual variety. Had there been a camera in the courtroom, that might have been one thing, but they had to work with what they had. I'm no big fan of Maddow's, but I think she did an excellent job reading the texts from the reporter in the room.

--Dave Sikula

[M-D November]

Jon Stewart had the perfect caption for this back when he was hosting TDS - at the time it only applied to F** News, but once could make an argument that "Crisis on Bullshit Mountain" applies pretty equally to all of the 24hr news networks these days.