News teasers are dead
Apr. 12th, 2007 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI was listening to National Public Radio's morning show All Things Considered and I heard a report about The World Bank.
It started out as an indictment of the Republic of Congo's corruption issues: about how 2/3rds of the "teachers" on its public school staff never actually teach but just collect paychecks and how all of the oil money the Congolese government generates never makes it into public works. The article then transitioned into one about The World Bank's latest round of debt relief for The Congo, and whether or not Bank presidend and Bush appointee Paul Wolfowitz was in the right for arguing that the Congo did not deserve debt relief because it was so corrupt.
Wolfowitz had made "dealing with corruption" the central theme of his tenure as leader of the World Bank. He argued that nations were poor because they were corrupt, and that the World Bank should not fund corrupt governments. I'm with him on this. But the Bank is primarily a European institution and their representatives were furious with Wolfowitz for his unilateral and dictatorial style.
At the end of the sequence, the voiceover said, "Wolfowitz is now at the center of his own controversy. More on that tomorrow."
Tomorrow?, I thought. Be serious. Does anyone out there who gives half a damn about the news not know that Wolfowitz, the corruption buster, is now at the center of a scandal because he hired his girlfriend to be his secretary at a salary several times higher than what a World Bank functionary otherwise earns? Even if you didn't, just type 'Wolfowitz' into Google news and it comes right up. Along with scathing indictments of Wolfowitz's "witch hunt" to find the "corrupt leakers of sensitive hiring and salary information within the World Bank."
Go ahead, have that dark bitter laugh.
Does NPR really think it's attracting listeners with this kind of "more tomorrow" news cycle? I'll hear it only because it'll be on during my radio-listening time, and I'll pay attention only because I want to hear how a mainstream news show deals with it.
It started out as an indictment of the Republic of Congo's corruption issues: about how 2/3rds of the "teachers" on its public school staff never actually teach but just collect paychecks and how all of the oil money the Congolese government generates never makes it into public works. The article then transitioned into one about The World Bank's latest round of debt relief for The Congo, and whether or not Bank presidend and Bush appointee Paul Wolfowitz was in the right for arguing that the Congo did not deserve debt relief because it was so corrupt.
Wolfowitz had made "dealing with corruption" the central theme of his tenure as leader of the World Bank. He argued that nations were poor because they were corrupt, and that the World Bank should not fund corrupt governments. I'm with him on this. But the Bank is primarily a European institution and their representatives were furious with Wolfowitz for his unilateral and dictatorial style.
At the end of the sequence, the voiceover said, "Wolfowitz is now at the center of his own controversy. More on that tomorrow."
Tomorrow?, I thought. Be serious. Does anyone out there who gives half a damn about the news not know that Wolfowitz, the corruption buster, is now at the center of a scandal because he hired his girlfriend to be his secretary at a salary several times higher than what a World Bank functionary otherwise earns? Even if you didn't, just type 'Wolfowitz' into Google news and it comes right up. Along with scathing indictments of Wolfowitz's "witch hunt" to find the "corrupt leakers of sensitive hiring and salary information within the World Bank."
Go ahead, have that dark bitter laugh.
Does NPR really think it's attracting listeners with this kind of "more tomorrow" news cycle? I'll hear it only because it'll be on during my radio-listening time, and I'll pay attention only because I want to hear how a mainstream news show deals with it.
