KMOV Flop

While we're on the topic of KMOV's terrible "reporting," I just had to point out my absolute all-time favor KMOV flop. This one isn't quite as important as their smear jobs on food-stamp recipients or university research, but it's just really funny and demonstrates the complete and utter collapse of modern TV news.

On the KMOV blog, Mark Schnyder wrote a "get off my lawn" post whining about the fact that Wash U students didn't have time to speak to him on their way to class:

I was across the street from the Washington University campus Wednesday morning carrying out my morning assignment: attempting to get thoughtful comments from students at Wash U regarding the upcoming appearance of Bristol Palin on their campus. You wouldn't believe how many student were late for class. I approached about a dozen seperate groups of students to get their opinion and almost all of them said, "Sorry, I'm late for class." A couple of them agreed to walk and talk with me but all the while I'm thinking, "wow, your parents are paying good money for you to go to Washington University and about 95% of my sample is late for class." This can't be good.

I know the area Schnyder is talking about, and his post is remarkably petty and ridiculous. He was trying to interview students on a road that is a direct path between the dorms and many classrooms, some of which I've taught in. Most students travel that road to get to their morning classes and, as is not surprising at all, they have no interest in waking up early to get to class 20 minutes early. But, generally speaking, they get to class on time. In fact, I'm frequently quite amazed at how seriously Wash U students take their classes, compared to other places I've been at.

It seems obvious to me that what the students were saying was, "If I talk to you, I will be late for class." But Schyder apparently couldn't handle the thought that students wanted to get to class on time rather than talk to him. He ended his post with this:

I can take the rejection but it's hard to stomach the idea of so many of our future leaders missing class.

Actually, it's pretty obvious, you can't take the rejection.

The Wisconsin Revolution Continued: Activist Hub Radio 2/27/10

Adam and I continue our discussion on Wisconsin and the labor movement's efforts to block Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker plan to destroy collective bargaining rights for public workers and tackle the media blackout from the mainstream media. We also look at the St. Louis Tea Party's paranoia over the New Black Panther Party and the Muslim Brotherhood.



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From Ed Martin's Fingers to Jake Wagman's Mouth: The Utter Collapse of Post-Dispatch Credibility

About a month ago, I wrote that Jake Wagman was a lazy and biased reporter who blatantly pandered to serial-liar Ed Martin and, I might add, backed up my claims with evidence. Well, it's hard to think of better evidence for these claims than the crap-sandwich Wagman served up for Post-Dispatch readers today. All it took was a x < 140 characters belch from Ed Martin:
, and Wagman was off to the races with his latest great story idea. Of course, I'm sure Wagman wouldn't just write about such nonsense just from seeing Martin tweet. Ed probably had to call him up and make him feel special in order for Wagman to flush the standards of decent journalism down the toilet, just like he did many times during the elections.

But it is truly amazing that Wagman gets paid to do things like turning a tweet into a 6 paragraph blog post about a Craigslist advertisement, squeezed in between making casual observations about football. Who knows? Maybe the cold-hearted owners of Lee Enterprises like the world much better when reporters focus on meaningless nonsense rather than actually investigating the use and abuse of power.

I will note that there are good journalists at the Post-Dispatch who still try to hold the paper to the high standards of journalism practiced in the golden days. Unfortunately, the reporter assigned to cover some of the most important political topics of our time is not one of them.