Media
Dexter, Gerry L.
MEDIA Gerry L. Dexter Riding the Shortwaves I'm about to pick on Peter Jennings. Nothing personal, understand. He's just the one I watch most nights; you can substitute your own anchorman if you...
...Television isn't the only news media fraud...
...No single source can provide all the news, but too much of what we receive comes from newsrooms dispensing the stuff as though they were working under the golden arches...
...The world is full of events the domestic and domesticated media never tell us about...
...I neither read nor saw anything about the Chinese artillery attacks on Vietnam, which Radio Havana said killed several Vietnamese...
...Dozens of international broadcasting stations beam English-language news and other programs in our direction every day on shortwave...
...Brand X is shortwave radio...
...No one was killed in the second bomb blast in two days at the offices of the Bolivian Workers' Confederation in La Paz as the general strike continued there...
...Fortunately, I have access to a fourth source, a sort of media Brand X that offers a nonstop fountain of news, most of it not provided by the others...
...this was merely a bomb...
...Sample each and I expect your taste buds will tell you which one adds real flavor to your news diet...
...Washington, however, is not the world's only meeting place...
...So after Jennings has told me the latest sad tales from South Africa, I switch on the shortwave and learn things he didn't mention—such as the Radio Netherlands report that South African President P.W...
...media must use a formula that factors in the number of people killed, proximity to the United States, and the relative importance of the foreign locale in deciding whether Third World wars, border conflicts, and disasters deserve a mention...
...The voice of Germany told me that opposition party leaders had met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and with Chinese leaders in Beijing...
...I need more...
...Not front-page stuff, but welcome cream for the morning brew...
...So said Radio Havana in its English broadcast to North America...
...you can substitute your own anchorman if you like...
...If we pay close attention, and the foreign visitor is sufficiently important, we usually find out who is visiting the President or which delegation has arrived in the nation's capital...
...Well, that's news from South America again...
...I have a suspicion that the American Gerry L. Dexter is the shortwave broadcast editor for Popular Communications magazine...
...Nor did I spot mention of the Voice of America report that fifteen people were killed in a bus accident in southern Peru...
...And independence for the Indonesian island of East Timor was talked up by delegates to a meeting of nonaligned countries in Angola...
...Botha is under increasing pressure to resign and turn the job over to a younger, more forward-thinking man...
...Both the Voice of Germany and Radio Havana report on the sit-in by members of West Germany's Green Party at Bonn's embassy in Pretoria...
...It won't matter much, because they all "cover the world" in twenty-two minutes, usually with non-news stories tossed in...
...All you have to do is listen...
...Maybe they don't have the time or the space...
...Holland notes that Botha, sixty-nine, suffered a stroke last January...
...I'm a news junkie, and the fix provided by television, the weeklies, and my newspaper just isn't enough...
...It's not surprising Jennings didn't mention that...
...Well, I have a newsflash for them: I am interested...
...A coup seems to be the minimum requirement for a South American story to appear on the cue cards...
...The day's first coffee is sipped to the news from Radio Australia and reports on negotiations between the Sri Lanka government and Tamil separatists...
...They're all ripping us off...
...Take your own test: Pour six ounces of television, newspapers, magazines, and international radio into pop-top cans, remove the labels, and switch the cans around...
...That big, thick daily in Metropolis isn't giving us "all the news that's fit to print," and Time and Newsweek content themselves with packaging what we've already seen on the tube or read in the dailies...
...Perhaps they believe we wouldn't be interested...
Vol. 49 • December 1985 • No. 12
