Back in HK and quite happy, despite all the SARS worries, to be in the land of shiny pointy skyscrapers, air conditioning, and no mosquitoes. I think I understand what they mean by "Asia's World City" (as corny as it sounds) now: Hong Kong is just so shiny, clean, Westernized, and vertical, and to a kid who grew up 10 miles from NYC that's how I imagine a city ought to look. Taipei, situated on an earthquake zone and not restricted for space, is much more sprawling and flat. And damned hot too. But I do miss speaking Mandarin already -- for lunch today I tried ordering "menu #8" with my rudimentary Cantonese and they brought me: tea.
Been catching up on the news. Now that the war's a fait accompli, even mainstream ABC News is reporting as "news" that perhaps WMD weren't the real reason for the war, that the Sept. 11 Attacks Changed Everything. That's odd, because I could've sworn PBS already did an hour-long special on the same story a few months ago. Registered myself on the Fox News Channel's site to watch their videos and see what all the fuss is about, and only one question: why does O'Reilly show his cuecards on the screen during his opinion pieces?
Today's SCMP proclaimed "WHO says outbreak has peaked in HK," and you can see the more relaxed attitude on the street -- less people wearing masks, maybe only half. So things are looking up: hopefully HK will follow Vietnam's example (when has anyone ever followed Vietnam's example?) and get rid of SARS soon.
Posted by cce at April 29, 2003 12:51 PM | TrackBack"liberal media" is a myth.
Posted by: ben at April 30, 2003 02:05 PMLiberal media is not a myth -- it's a reality. Only since Fox News came around has there been any competition.
I'm not sure why O'Reilly shows his cue cards while he talks. Maybe it's so that the visual people can get as much out of it as the auditory people?
Posted by: Dan at May 2, 2003 02:51 AMYeah, I'd say that most people who work in media/journalism are generally "liberal"-leaning, whatever that means, just on virtue of their backgrounds, education, personal reasons for going into journalism, etc. Self-censorship is another issue in America that comes up a lot, especially among people working for mainstream news organizations...
Posted by: chris at May 2, 2003 01:45 PMo'reilly is the ratings king. non-conservatives who believe that nobody takes o'reilly seriously are fooling themselves -- people believe they're watching "news" when they turn him on. what they're really consuming is illogical hatemongering.
the ratings figures alone are enough to justify the claim that "liberal media," in quotes like that and viewed as a statement on media as a whole, isn't what we're seeing.
also, as chris sort of suggested, the liberal-density in the working ranks of the major news outfits has little bearing on the agenda of each corporation as a whole...
Posted by: ben at May 2, 2003 02:16 PM