[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I know this picture doesnt look like much. It's grainy, it's bleached out quite a bit

But you owe it to yourselves to look at that picture, and think.

There is a rover climbing a hill on mars.

Isnt that amazing?

If you think hard enough - you can actually imagine being there. Walking with a rover, that we sent half a billion km's to a whole other world.

Sometimes, an image will just catch me off guard and I'll go "wow - LOOK at what we can do!"

Doug

[djellison]

It's a carrot stick issue though isnt it.

Should the media give the coverage of things that are interesting, remarkable, newsworthy

OR

Should the media give the coverage that the public want (Big Brother, Michael Jackson, Jesus on a piece of toast)

And would doing the former change the requirements of the later?

Doug

[dvandorn]

Should the media give the coverage of things that are interesting, remarkable, newsworthy

OR

Should the media give the coverage that the public want (Big Brother, Michael Jackson, Jesus on a piece of toast)

Examples of American news people of the first category -- Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid.

Examples of the latter category -- Bill O'Reilly, Anderson Cooper, Britt Hume.

First category -- legends in their field. Second category -- hacks.

You're probably right that the bottom-line news organization owners are only interested in giving people what *they* think the people want, but that fact hasn't changed in the last 50 years. What *has* changed is that news organizations have been vetted by their wealthy owners such that organizations like CBS News no longer are alllowed to report the atcual facts of the great and important stories of the day, for fear that more people want to hear what someone "above" them tells them is important than what is *really* important...

-the other Doug