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Show AllTerrific!
Nice.
That was a great response -unrehearsed, full of genuine conviction, down to earth, articulate, no wasted filler words and I can see why Faux blinkered 'news' wouldn't run it.
Essentially, there was a dangerous amount of truth in it.
Jesse LaGreca ROCKS!
He gets my vote!
I loved the interviewer: "We're here to help your voice get heard!" (oops, you didn't mumble Hippy inanities like you were supposed to. Yeah, umm, commercial-break! Back to you, Greta! Tell us more about those Darling Dancing Bears!)
Yes - and he made such a point of how Fox is important in getting voices out there. Makes it all so richly ironic!
Wonderful, hopefully Jon Stewart has a recording.
That was absolutely beautiful. Truly beautiful.
I loved the way the Faux 'reporter' just completely ignored what the man was saying, trying desperately to stay within the boundaries of the heavily biased 'We report, you decide' crap-fest that is the Faux News doctrine.
Get this guy a forum; TV, radio, whatever. Any progressive that articulate, that intelligent, and that fast on his feet needs to be heard.
Now, multiply that by hundreds of thousands (an admittedly low estimate) of people out there who ARE articulate, fed up and ready to walk the walk.
OH Jesse! Just being who you are and speaking it straight... Thanks Man!
The New York Times' (in)famous motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print", is the Amerikan archetype of a kind of Big Lie: the propaganda publisher's blatant cynicism passing itself off as high-minded probity.
Each separate tentacle of the corporate mass-media consent manufactory, old and new alike, has slogans that are variations on this theme.
But the common denominator is that the owners or their servile editors reserve the right to unilaterally deem what is or isn't fit to print or broadcast.
This tidbit obviously didn't make the cut. Besides, there are all kinds of riveting developments concerning Amanda Knox and Michael Jackson's doctor that take precedence over such inferior and commonplace vox pop.
I think we have found the perfect answer to Joe the plumber...this young man speaks my mind and please professional politicos note how he didn't have to toe the party line, keep on message, waffle, and took none of the bait offered. He should have his own show, honestly, articulate and well on top of the 'interviewer' who I think was just stunned. I wonder if he might be prepeared to Primary Obama? I wish someone would...there would be a debate I would be prepared to watch! Oh wel.....
Don't worry, once people find their voice you will hear a lot of good things.
Everyone at Occupy Wallstreet is doing an extraordinary thing, Jesse La Greca is shineing. Cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well spoken, Jesse LaGreca! A few more voices like this, and hopefully more people will acknowledge that this is likely a movement in the making and it deserves all the support, that NOT all Americans are dumb and also hopefully some people will stop their snide, cynical, holier-than-thou pronouncements that they've been making even right here on CD for the last 2+ weeks!
Great work, Drew Grant, in getting the video!
You Rock Jesse! Thanks for what your doing and excellent job of interviewing the interviewee.
Not that I have any love for Fox, but does the poster of this tidbit assume that every vox pop should be aired in its entirety?
Note: for people who want to make it into a package, this is what happens.
The cameraman gets shots: shots to establish the scene, interesting close-ups, etc. The hapless editor later goes through the tape and puts down the good shots (meaning not shaky, with good color, i.e. usable) onto the timeline.
The editor then pops in the interviews (or SOTs), which the reporter should have tracked. What that means is that they have to go through all their interviews and write down verbatim what the interviewees said, noting the timecode on the tape.
(Which is to say, if you "rant" for two and a half minutes, speaking very quickly, you just gave them practically nothing to edit in, while at the same time giving them massive amounts of transcription work while they're under a deadline.)
The reporter then gives the transcribed material to the producer and possibly others in management and they go over what soundbytes they're going to use in conjunction with the pretty, pretty pictures.
The package gets edited, right in time to air. The editor wipes his/her brow under muttered curses.
So note: if you're giving an interview at a protest or at any time, do these things:
Never look at the camera.
Don't cuss. Don't shout.
Speak clearly and slowly.
Speak in short sentences with an undeniable message.
And don't fucking insult people who make $45,000 a year by insinuating that they're in with the Murdochs and Kochs of the world.
If this speaker had picked his nose and said 'dude' a coupla times, it would have LED the news on Faux that evening. So, you're going to have to try harder to get me to feel sorry for the Faux reporter, who has obviously been trained in 'gotcha media', doing his best to get the embarrassing soundbite. It is in his arrogance, when the interview begins, that we observe how thoroughly he tows the corporate line, over and above his paycheck ("do you take your CUE from those who got arrested last weekend").
I agree that its not right to insult such people. If you'll agree that the media they represent is worth much, MUCH worse, than a mere insulting. Murdoch etal has tried, and pretty near succeeded, in destroying Western Civilization. Do you honestly think a long-winded, erudite, insult to Faux is what we're REALLY all thinking? I'm thinking 'get a rope'.
The Faux reporter, so eager to reassure his 'victim' that he just wants to help him tell his story, is part of a system that deep-sixed the interview the MOMENT it became clear that he was talking to someone with a brain (which would be confusing to Faux viewers). Frankly, in that unsurprising turn of events, I find all the speakers disgust fully verified.
I was trying to give you a little perspective on how things work in newsrooms, in general.
It's obvious you do not like Fox news but that in no way makes for a reasoned argument as to why a 2:30 rant didn't make it on the air.
OK. So Glenn Beck can spend several HOURS calling the POTUS a 'white person hater', but a 2 minute rant is just 'too much' for the newsroom. Got it.
Glenn Beck was the host of his own television show. He does not work out of the newsroom.
FYI, most stories, industry standard, run about 1:30. SOTs or soundbytes are usually six to ten seconds.
I'm just telling you how things work on the ground.
Its an interesting dichotomy. The speaker noted in his speech the lack of coverage of Faux News tapping the phones of 9/11 widows. And many of us have assumed, over the years, that what makes it to the small-screen, and what gets left out, has less to do with an editors technical challenges, and more to do with a publishers politics. That works double for Faux.
Nah, I'll keep my opinion. And remain surprised that you would keep yours.
Listen, my point was that the more presentable a person is, the more likely that person's comments will make it on the air. One cannot expect a news program to run vox populi outright and uncut.
You're assuming I'm in with the evil crowd because I pointed out how stupid it is to expect a show to go completely out of its technical format.
The guy listed grievances too wide in scope to be treated by the subject matter the reporter was probably going for. He was probably looking for a quip to the tune of, "Wall Street is running the country and we're here to say no."
In as far as my opinions go on the news business in general, you have no idea what they are as I haven't stated them.
The interview began with the reporter asking the speaker if he was taking his 'cues' from the weekend marchers who 'incited... police activity... to get arrested'. The reporter clearly caught himself there, and realized that he meant to say 'incited to violence', which is like calling the speaker a terrorist, so he caught himself and toned it down a bit. I thought the speakers response to be incredibly reasonable, given that he'd just almost been called a terrorist, when he said 'its a little hard to know how to answer a question like that', which is 'reasonable' for 'you 8sshole!'.
The reporter then asks: 'how would YOU like to see this end?', which, given the events over the weekend he had just referred to, meant 'would you like to see this end in violence?'. Again, he's basically calling the speaker a terrorist.
"my point was that the more presentable a person is" LOL. You've convinced me that we obviously didn't observe the same interview. With comments like that you've convinced me that you have an ulterior motive in your critique. You aren't arguing against the technical difficulty of editing this interview. Now, apparently, you have a problem with the speakers decor.
"The guy listed grievances too wide in scope to be treated by the subject matter the reporter was probably going for" The reporter was asking him if he was ready to take his cue by inciting to violence, leading to police action of the 'pepper spray first, ask questions later' variety. To be honest, against that bias, ANY answer he might have given, would have been 'out of scope' by your definition. The real world doesn't comport itself to your image of the dogged-reporter, just trying to fit the facts into his preconceived notions.
Ubrew: Don't forget the camera picture shaking the whole time. too. This was a PROFESSIONAL cameraman! He did this to make the person interviewed look “unstable’. He also kept putting the lens partly behind the interviewer and popping out to make it look even crazier. Add to this he kept the focus going in and out. A total attempt at a hatchet job.(I’ve seen 7 year olds with a camcorder do better work.) Just what we expect from a public relations arm of the plutocracy.
No. the only reason we are getting this, at all, is because someone recorded it with his/her cellphone. The actual official interview did a 'Farenheit 451', probably within a few hours of recording.
That makes more sense! (Duh.) LOL Farenheit 451.
Funny how the truths of those old books like Farenheit 451, Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World and Lord of the Flies just keep floating to the top. I wonder how many still remain on High School reading lists?
Dude. It was a handicam. You're right this was not shot by a professional. And yes it didn't air on cable.
Yeah, I just got that. (Fatigue can make you regret typing thoughts into digital eternity.) By the way, you make a lot of sense about interviews. But Fox should have aired at least a segment of it. The guy was erudite and articulate and there were at least 3 distinct sections to the video. It was not his faults that undid him, but rather that Fox couldn’t find faults. That is what bothers ubrew and me, and for all your excellent points about interviews, they don't quite fit in this case. There were a couple of exceptionally good sound bites if they cared about the proles.
So the reporter, clearly stammering in the beginning, said something douchey and then retracted a tad. Then he said he just wanted the protesters to get the world out after he had realized that he had totally gotten into an argument. That's what I saw. Sure, he was being a jerk.
I'm saying a good response would be to PR it. It's fine that this young man, who I have no problem with, slizzamed the Fox guy. But don't expect that to get on the air. He went off and none of it was airable.
If you want to get on the air you deliver a soundbyte and smile.
Sheesh.
I don't have an ulterior motive in working for the man. But I've been to many protests, as sometimes a participant and sometimes a journalist. One thing you notice immediately is how many different groups converge upon the same space. Some are Catholic clergy. They comport themselves thus. Cope Pink has it's own methods--they're known for being lovingly, and in good fun, publicly disruptive. They get on the cameras in their own way. Others sit down and don't budge in a different type of action. This generates stories. The Raging Grannies do their own thing: when they get arrested, people know. It makes for good pictures.
One thing that is essential is that people at least know how shit gets aired. The success of well known protest groups is attributed to good PR.
I think its counter-productive and ironic to rage about not everything getting aired the way you like it based on your political beliefs.
If you have a message, control it. Or don't.
Just don't get all shocked when it doesn't air.
"[the protester] went off and none of it was airable." Clearly it was airable. It's airing is why we are here talking about it.
"One thing that is essential is that people at least know how shit gets aired." The more shit that gets aired on television, the more people know that television is shit. You are right in identifying what gets aired as shit. You are wrong in identifying it as 'essential'. You don't have to believe me, as I believe it myself: the more 'essential' something is to television, the more it is shit.
"If you want to get on the air you deliver a soundbyte and smile." The old song goes 'the revolution will not be televised'. You take the television, I'll take the revolution. I understand your point. But, basically, you are saying that every interviewee must take into account the perspective of the interviewer. And what I'm saying is bvllsh8t. If you're going to bother me with your questions, the empathy is all yours. If I'm saying something original, something that matters, a real reporter will stick around. A 'faux' reporter will split, and thus reinforce what a 'faux' reporter actually is.
I used to work as an ENG camera person and occasionally as a reporter. I know good and damn well from personal experience that corporate network TV and its affiliates and public TV will cover inarticulate, physically ugly interviewees so long as what they are saying is politically "safe" from the perspective of this or that commercial or "public" news organization's editor(s), owners or governing board (in the case of PBS). Faux News is no different and loves to cover human train wrecks who it can politically belittle.
Hypothetically assuming your assertions about "how things work on the ground" are correct, that doesn't make what they produce professional journalism, let alone infotaining McNews or exciting, or informative, or intellectually compelling television. The American broadcast TV news industry and its "journalistic standards" have been continuously degenerating since the early 1980s and cable TV news has rapidly deteriorated since Turner sold control of CNN to AOL/Time Warner in the 1990s. Poll after poll for 20 years has shown a justifiable decline in public trust of the commercial news networks, and the more corporatist and militarist PBS and NPR have become the less they are trusted by the public as well (although they are still much more trusted than the fully commercial networks).
All our commercial TV news corporations have failed and/or deliberately betrayed middle-class and lower-class America on increasingly grand scales for nearly three decades and maintain a pro-plutocracy, anti-democratic adversarial relationship with the general public. In international conferences of journalists our corporate news media are regarded as one of the most dumbed-down, corporately and politically manipulated laughing stocks among all the news organizations in the rest of the industrialized Western nations.
"How they do things" by reducing complex important topics to lobotomized sound bites is one of the things that is most wrong with what passes for TV news in this declining country.
Well said. I began to feel almost 'dirty' talking to the other fellow, telling me how important it is to part your hair on the right side before you give an interview.
Well stated, metal... While the whole discussion of how to be practical and most effective at getting the corporate media to cover your side the way you want it to was interesting, I have to agree that for the most part it's hopeless to think that much of the time it would be at all worth the trouble to fool with. At least if the dissident(s) are talking openly in terms of the whole system of empire, the MIC, anything that's stated in terms that are too anti-corporate, etc.
Several years ago, maybe even over ten, I forget, I had an experience that really opened my eyes cynically to how things really work when any mass media organization-in this case Iowa Public Television-that accepts corporate money, even in so-called "underwriting" for its programing. A great documentary produced and narrated by Bill Moyers called Trading Democracy, about the WTO, NAFTA and the selling out of democracy to multinationals, was scheduled, much to my surprise, to be shown on statewide Iowa Public Television. The only showing was, not surprisingly, scheduled for late night, like 2 a.m. I think. Maybe it was to make room for all the classic British sitcoms they love to show so much in prime time on weeknights, maybe it was to kill any wide viewership or claim it was too adult for kids to see, I dunno.
Anyway, I set my VCR hopefully and then played the tape the next day to see how it was. About a half hour into the broadcast, just as the doc was getting good about how we got sold out with NAFTA and are being taken over by the WTO as far as our govt. losing/giving away its soverignty to them when, whoosh, the program is cut away from very awkwardly (maybe to make it look more like a mistake) and the rest of the time programmed for the doc is taken up by some bland show called Opera Classics. I still keep that VHS tape to this day to confront anyone who chooses to doubt me or call me paranoid about how corrupt this media system is in the US.
Not surprisingly when I called the offices of Iowa Public TV they listened politely to my angry complaint about the obvious censorship but completely denied that's what happened, claimed it was a mistake by the engineer, etc. I told them I didn't believe them for a second and was glad I never pledged them any money. Of course they also never ran another broadcast of the show, claiming they were too busy, couldn't afford to extend the rights to run it again, etc. Funny how they had the same attitude a few years before about running Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent...ran it once only after much griping by fans of his in Iowa but the same BS... one airing and only very late at night on a weeknite.
I'm betting when they pulled the plug on the Moyers doc all it took was one angry call by a conservative big donor to IPTV saying "What the hell is this stuff?" and then they pulled the plug.
Yes, and a good point of all this is that real policy issues cannot be reduced to sound bites. The media's insistence on breaking complex issues down into easily packaged components for programming purposes is a major contributing factor in the near total destruction of intelligent political discourse in the US.
Ah, the straw man has arrived. Looks like the gang's all here.
Thanks for the lesson but the way it works with fair and balanced is fair and balanced, not fuck everyone that is not far right propaganda!
Yeah, I know. Fox is by no means Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. But still, if you should find yourself in front of a camera...give yourself half a chance. The little people aren't out to get you.
Anyone familiar with Bill O'Reilly's TV crews and how he uses them knows that's hogwash. Plenty of those "little people" are looking to climb the career ladder by scoring points screwing over interviewees and anyone else targeted by Faux McNews.
Gyro- You make some interesting and probably very true observations as an insider. But even tho I agree with you that the "little guy" or as I would say, hired servant, of the media shapers isn't out to get or screw over lefties who try to get out their message, I don't think it really matters much how well we play the game with someone on that level because, as my other post in this thread shows, those hired servants really don't have any of the real veto power that big advertisers/donors or management/ownership at the media organizations have regarding what is allowed to be seen and heard and what isn't.
Wow, then it's a complete waste of time, I guess.
If the news media doesn't value articulate delivery from a person they interview on the street, it's pretty hopeless. But as others have noted, Fox News is not an ordinary news organization.
Fox News is not a news organization at all.
So, basically, plutocratic propaganda TV McNews not only insists on twisting virtually every infotainment segment they air into a lie or series of lies, but they insist on the right to order how their subjects of street interviews should behave as they are trying to exploit them.
What woosey-tude this country now rolls in.
Jesse LaGreca is dynamite.
Imagine Jesse debating Oilbomber!
Jesse LaGreca for president!
+1
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/10/03/erin-burnett-seriously-wall-street.cnn?&hpt=hp_c2
The above is the link to CNN’s coverage. LIES! It has to be seen to be believed! Towards the end the bubble head uses data on the automotive bailout in place of the bank bailout and smarmily says: “the taxpayers made money on the bailout” and then scolds all the misfits. (Which of course, they featured the most bizarre looking.)
If the bailouts were so profitable for taxpayers, why are we facing more austerity and cuts? I don't remember those receiving the bailout facing any austerity measures or cuts. They handed out bonuses. I remember them saying they were like pro-athletes and superstars...that they deserved those bonuses.
I'd like to compare how much taxpayers profitted from the bailouts compared to how much the companies receiving them profitted. Anyone have those figures? And if not, why not? That's a quantative assessment I would think any intelligent lender would make after the fact.
"Adding Up the Government’s Total Bailout Tab
Beyond the $700 billion bailout known as TARP, which has been used to prop up banks and car companies, the government has created an array of other programs to provide support to the struggling financial system. Through April 30, the government has made commitments of about $12.2 trillion and spent $2.5 trillion — but also has collected more than $10 billion in dividends and fees. Here is an overview, organized by the role the government has assumed in each case."
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.html
10 billion in return for 2.5 trillion doesn't seem like that big a return to me, especially when you consider we've committed 12.2 trillion. Had we invested and lent like Goldman Sach's model we'd be handing out bonuses and posting record profits instead of facing cuts and austerity.
If they're superstars? What's that make those of us that bailed them out? We've just invested in worthless "commercial paper" and "toxic assets", they're investing in blue chip stocks and probably applauded when Standard and Poors degraded our national standing. How many Goldman Sach's alumni does it take in our nation's administration to grind the rest of us into dust?