Video blogging and the War

I have been blogging the war on video tape. Taking advantage of digital cable I have been watching at least five hours a day and switching among all channels.

All the American all-news networks give a tactical sense of the war with their embedded reporters, war as a choppy movie. Other networks give a more total picture.

The BBC is conservative but more balanced than the Americans and with greater emphasis on the strategic picture. They will show the Egyptian ambassador on an interview show explaining how the specific language of the resolution that Blair and Bush has cited specifically does not authorize war (even if the interviewer was confrontational).

Newsworld International and Canada's The National are the most thoughtful and balanced with good coverage of the anti-war movements.

The best things are often not on a news network, CSPAN with a good interview and alternating support and opposition phone calls, PBS Charlie Rose interviews or NOW or Frontline, the History Channel found a neocon from the Naval War College to debate two main stream historians, sort of Meet the Historians, The Daily Show is the best as the liberal laughing and sarcastic alternative.

Of the main news networks - Fox is consistently conservative and loudly opinionated and aims to a lower intellect. It often has small mistakes but is usually flashy and exciting.

CNN is middle of the road and can get dull. I'm not impressed by their anchors but their news is OK.

MSNBC has the most potential but they keep blowing it. They seem to often have a story first, have a variety of viewpoints, frequent updates, and are less likely to stick to a story too long like FX and CNN. It is frustrating when occasionally they just go totally wrong. The latest example was interviewing anti-feminist Elaine Donnelly, a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy of hard-right tax-free foundations. MSNBC had an uncritical interview with no opposing viewpoint or sharp questioning as she opines that this war has proved that having females in combat is just wrong and that there are too many women in uniform.

I'm sorry, what? My brief survey finds this war is making women heroes and is inspiring questions about why they are excluded from combat roles. Again, someone influential made a phone call and she gets her uninterrupted opinion out there with no answers or questions while even a brief survey of high school girls would yield sharply different opinions. Watching the network it often seems like there are sharp internal debates on what they should show when it has a basic good product.

This is probably a poor blog, besides grammatical errors I should stick to one point instead of making observations about networks and then moaning about the lost potential of MSNBC when they had previously shown their problems long ago.