Supposedly independent
Submitted by James on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 1:23pm
If there's one thing I admire about the Show, it's their sheer persistence. They can take any development of any kind and reframe it to suit the free-market agenda, even if it takes spinning pure fantasy. That's what John Hood did last week with his crocodile tears over the Legislature's "heavy handed" treatment of UNC-TV. The honorables demanded raw footage about Alcoa, the station complied, and John found cause for alarm.
If you thought that the prospect of a legislative committee issuing commands to a supposedly independent news organization would provoke widespread outrage and condemnation, you were wrong.
Supposedly independent? According to whom? The State of North Carolina owns everything about UNC-TV except the willingness to pay its full operating costs. There's nothing even slightly independent about it. When I worked there 25 years ago, everyone understood that completely. Nothing has changed, nor should it.
Here's Hood again:
My preferred solution would be to privatize UNC-TV – move its operations and assets into a nonprofit, which is the way public TV operates in other states and the model used by, for example, The Daily Tar Heel in Chapel Hill. In the meantime, North Carolina politicians and journalists of all stripes should snap to attention, unite as one voice, and tell Fletcher Hartsell and his Senate colleagues that their thuggish tactics will not be tolerated in a free society.
Imagine that Art Pope wanted an employee of the Show to share her notes about a forthcoming story. Can you see John Hood snapping to attention and telling Mr. Pope that such thuggish tactics will not be tolerated in a free society?
Pretty funny stuff.
Hat tip to Ed Cone
for starting the discussion.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
Yeah, John Hood is real independent ;)
And so are the lower-tier mouthpieces he oversees.
I love it when those faux-arguments surface over at The Locker Room. It's always a you're not wrong, you just didn't go far enough-type approach, where they feed on each other to turn innuendo into a tide of evidence.
Just once, I'd like to see them grill each other like we do here frequently, but that kind of spontaneous debate doesn't happen in a controlled and choreographed environment. They should change their name to Propaganda: The Musical.
John and his twin brother
I went to high school with John and his brother:
This explains a lot
There's seems to have been an early proclivity for "tap-dancing around a subject". :)
Just bustin' yer chops a little, John. I'm not sure if I have any old pictures that aren't embarassing. Here's one of me showing off my 11 year-old physique:
Laura weighs in
at Ed's Place, and smacks me down. Not to be deterred by the facts, my opinion only intensifies.
:)
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
It looks to me like
we have (at least in this instance) a pretty serious conflict between two statutes. I posted a link to the Shield Law over at Ed's, but I'm getting close to agreeing with you (and the tap-dancer) about privatizing WUNC-TV.
But if that means the station loses 51% of its funding...
More silliness on UNC-TV
This time from a J-school professor who conflates all the issues into a raging condemnation of UNC-TV's handling of Alcoa-gate.
The sooner people stop expecting this state-owned public broadcaster to be anything other than the political entity that it is, the better off we'll all be.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.