March 3, 2008
Avi Lewis's America
According to the Inside the CBC blog and the National Post, Toronto's favourite boyish-looking provocateur, Avi Lewis, is back on the airwaves with his newest show, Frontline: USA. The show promises to "strip away the spin and highlight real issues such as poverty, violence, race, health, and immigration" in America. Considering that Lewis is involved and that the show airs on Al Jazeera English, chances are that Frontline: USA won't be a Dobbsian exercise in blaming America's problems on immigrants.
Avi Lewis is best known for being the first host of CBC's current affairs debate program counterSpin. Although his last two CBC shows, The Big Picture and On the Map, didn't make it to their second season, Lewis is still a highly respected media personality. The first episode of Frontline: USA examines the effects of Hurricane Katrina, exploring why America failed to protect its poorest citizens and how this affects the way New Orleans will vote in the upcoming election. The weekly show will continue until America's election, and then who knows. In the meantime, you can watch the show and other Al Jazeera English programs on their YouTube channel.
Video from Frontline: USA. Part two of the episode is also available on YouTube.
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How lazy can they be? Steal the show name FRONTLINE from PBS.
Wow, check out the comments in the National Post story. A lot of people certainly are upset that a Jewish journalist has a job at an Arabic-owned network. Plus, he's a big, bad lefty...someone is even asking that he be put on a terrorist watch list and another is calling the CBC a "Commie news department."
The comments on the "Post" story are shocking and really extreme. There is one positive comment, however it provoked further negative vitriol, like this gem: "Leftist values do not correspond to Jewish values." Really? I didn't know that religions held places on the political spectrum.
I thought it was an OK spot. It'll be interesting to see what other out of the ordinary perspectives they can use to report on the elections, etc. I like Avi as a host, and I'm excited by the sorts of stories I'm sure he'll be filing; the bit with the cabbie in Ghana was smart, and I hope they continue to expand on that angle.
What kept me from being really impressed, though, was that the writing, and the interviewees seemed to be quite heavily one-sided.
I know that the traditional news media out there tends to have their own individual biases and prejudgements, but I think it will always get under my skin when a story or a show which, ostensibly, presents itself as an alternative perspective is just as ham-fisted, or as narrow-minded as its counterpoint on the other side of the political spectrum.
To my mind, the issue tends to focus around money, more specifically advertising revenue. Newspapers, the most traditional news media tend to be the most obvious example: In each market, each publication essentially stakes out it's wedge of the political pie, providing prospective readers with a helpful rallying point and a solid brand. (i.e. "I'm well-read, and went to a liberal arts college, so I'll read the Globe all my life.")
Online media operations should change all of that. I don't expect much from the web-based offshoots of traditional sources, but the whole blogging thing, and the progress that has been made with streaming video (as capably demonstrated by Frontline:USA) clearly has the potential to blow the lid off the standard advertising formula.
So where Frontline: USA fails to innovate (aside from the name) isn't at all in the way it covers the news, but in the way it goes right back to predictable and firm biased reporting. Al Jazeera English is certainly catering to a particular audience, and is guilty of the same offence: giving people the news they want to hear.
Perhaps I'm unbelievably naive.
I suppose they're owned by the Fahd family.
Wow, check out the comments in the National Post story. A lot of people certainly are upset that a Jewish journalist has a job at an Arabic-owned network. Plus, he's a big, bad lefty...someone is even asking that he be put on a terrorist watch list and another is calling the CBC a "Commie news department."
The comments on the "Post" story are shocking and really extreme. There is one positive comment, however it provoked further negative vitriol, like this gem: "Leftist values do not correspond to Jewish values." Really? I didn't know that religions held places on the political spectrum.
Typical right-wing Canadian sheeple; can dish out shit, but can take the truth when somebody reports it.
If this had been Faux Snooze that Avi was on, and if he was a right-wing stooge like David Frum,these morons would be jumping for joy. But because he's left and saying what he says, they feel threatened-threatened enough to demand that he be tried as a traitor and expelled from Canada.
Boy, most cryptofacist Likudniks have a thin skin.