I'm a bit behind on posting my stats for Scarborough Country news coverage, so here's the summary for last week.

If I thought the week of Oct 10^th was fixated on violent crimes/missing persons (at 49% of the show's useful time dedicated to such stories, see round-up for the week 10/10/05), then I guess I have to use the words obsessed and wholly preoccupied to describe the coverage for the week of Oct.17^th. Since I’ve been tracking Scarborough Country’s topics (only four weeks now), last week hit a new high for total time dedicated to a handful of violent crimes. Just above sixty two percent (62.2%) of the show was dedicated to a handful of violent crimes/missing persons (Natalee Holloway, Pamela Vitale, Christie Wilson, Taylor Behl, and Scott Peterson). For a second week in a row the show scored perfect shut outs against topics like the Iraq war, CIA leak/plamegate, and the Supreme Court. Joe did find time (and money) for his show to travel to his alma mater (University of Alabama) and do a show largely dedicated to his warm feelings about the place and general nostalgia. Good job Joe, I guess you're a realist as to how many people are actually watching your show on a Friday night. I can't think of a better way to spend a national cable news program's time than discussing the origins of a college football team's mascot.

Joe Scarborough touts common sense, opening each show with the phrase: “Welcome to Scarborough Country; no passport required, only common-sense allowed.” I have to ask, where’s the common sense in pouring over the minutia and incessantly injecting nothing but speculation, guess work and opinion about a few crimes that are in the process of making their way through the criminal justice system? Talk about trial by media, most of Joe’s coverage is presented with an implicit and sometimes explicit assumption about the suspect’s guilt. The show continually displays a seemingly maniacal photo of the adolescent accused of the crime in the Vitale case, coupled with headlines like: “Goth kid killer”. Sometimes the headline includes a question mark, such as "Goth Killer?", as if that is their token attempted to maintain a presumption of innocense, which is a complete joke.

As I’ve stated before, almost all measures of violent crime are down. A show with such a singular focus on a few individual criminal cases should be relegated to court TV, but instead these topics not only dominate this program but also are frequently featured in as much, if not more, detail on MSNBC’s other programs (not to mention other cable news networks). But I only take notes for the topics of “Scarborough Country”, and the results for the week beginning Oct. 17^th are show in the pie chart and table below. Click on the pie chart image to enlarge.

Topic - week starting 10/17/05	M	T	W	Th	F	Total min.
Supreme Court	0	0	0	0	0	0
Iraq War	0	0	0	0	0	0
Katrina/FEMA	4	0	0	0	5	9
CIA Leak/Plamegate	0	0	0	0	0	0
Avian Bird flu	0	4	0	0	0	4
missing person (Holloway, Behl, Wilson, Peterson, "Shocking baby Horror")	27	30	25	23	20	125
Hurricane Wilma	1	2	12	11	6	32
Crimson Tide Football	0	0	0	0	11	11
Miscellaneous (Neo-nazi riot, global warming, CA car rescue, racy TV shows)	3	4	1	6	0	14
NFL Viking's wild party	6	0	0	0	0	6
Total minutes	41	40	38	40	42	201

Throughout history civilizations have relied on their leaders to guide them in times of peril. Many of the most enduring stories are those of great heroes who single handedly vanquished abominable foes and saved their people from certain doom. According to Joe Scarborough we don't have to look too far back into history to find such great heroes and leaders. There’s no need to dust off a book on Greek mythology to find inspiring tales of triumph and glory. Put those silly ancient works of fiction back up on the shelf where they belong and take a short trip down memory lane to meet a great hero of our time.

If history is merely one damned fact after another, Joe Scarborough cherry picks his facts in his latest blog post to conjure up a mythical warrior of the 1980s, a cold warrior who saved western civilization and rescued a crumbling empire from certain demise. In Joe’s latest blog we meet an equal to the great mythical heroes of the ancient world. A powerful leader whose singular vision was destined to guide her people through turbulent times and on to wealth and prosperity. As all great heroes of history the mere utterance of their name instilled fear in their enemies, and this hero has a thunderous name. And also, like many other great tales of heroism, this great leader, despite all her powers and vanquished foes, befalls a tragedy.

Meet “The Iron Lady”, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. You may be wondering what great feats would put Margaret Thatcher, a seemingly mortal human like the rest of us, in the category of mythical figures like Hercules and Theseus. Well Hercules, despite his supernatural strength, never saved an entire empire from certain collapse. According to Joe Scarborough, erudite student of history, the great Iron Lady was “a woman who by herself reversed the fortunes of this great nation”. By Joe’s historical account, the Iron Lady single handedly saved a once great empire from “rotting to its economic core” and “changed their fortunes forever”. You may still be unconvinced, perhaps thinking that Hercules and Theseus faced much more menacing foes like the Hydra and the Minotaur. Well again, as Joe astutely points out this hero's great feats, the Iron Lady “crushed labor unions, and buried forever the legacy of Clement Attlee”, which were both great evils that neither Hercules nor Theseus ever faced in their lifetimes.

A skeptic of the Iron Lady’s superhuman feats might point out that Britain’s economic woes in the 1970s were felt worldwide and mainly caused by the global oil crisis. A doubting Thomas may say that Clement Attlee’s legacy is hardly buried at all and that it lives on with Indian freedom and independence, British disengagement from costly occupations such as in Palestine, and the National Health System. Some may even go so far as to say that Clement Attlee’s legacy is not only alive and well but also thankfully so. Some may even dare to point to facts about the record unemployment caused by the Iron Lady’s policies in the early 1980s, the strife caused by protracted labor disputes, her implacable stance towards the conflict in Northern Ireland and how a wave of patriotism following the invasion of the Falkland Islands saved her political career at an opportune time when her popularity was at an all time low.

But the skeptic's cautious view of the Iron Lady's hero worshipers is where the tragedy of this great hero begins. As Joe laments: “Did she get the respect deserved from punks and politicians across the continent? No.” No indeed Joe Scarborough, no indeed. The tragedy here is that this great hero of our time will unfortunately be measured by the sum of her deeds, both good and bad, rather than the rosy picture painted by those who follow her ideology. The tragedy, that befalls so many leaders, is that not just their followers and supporters get to frame their legacy, but also those who believed in another path and those whose lives changed for the worse during their rule. But for those like Joe Scarborough who see the Iron Lady as nothing short of a modern day hero of mythical proportions, they can find comfort in knowing that their heroes will live on as gloriously as ever in their selective memories.

Last week was another week of "Scarborough Country" fixated on a few violent crimes and missing person cases. Swamping out the air-time of all other topics were the familiar cases of Holloway and Olivia Newton-John's missing boyfriend, a news staple for cable news shows. To supplement the dominance of this category were a few new cases with nothing much in common other than the fact that the victims were young, white females. For the sake of thoroughness, they included: murdered teen Taylor Behl, missing CA woman Christie Wilson, and a mother attacked for her unborn baby (story covered under the headline: "Stolen baby horror").

Virtually half of the show's useful airtime for the week (49%, see pie chart) was dedicated to this handful of cases. As if to reinforce its self-irrelevance and incongruence, the MSM reported that almost all measures of violent crime are down significantly since a decade ago. I wonder if the same can be said for the proportion of media coverage dedicated to violent crime. A good portion of the reporting on the Holloway case wasn't even original "Scarborough Country" reporting. Much of the content was simply a re-run of the coverage from "The Abrams Report", another MSNBC primetime show. In my short time making recorded observations of "Scarborough Country" I've noticed that the regurgitating of content from another affiliated source seems to be commonplace. A lot of reporting on "Scarborough Country" comes from other programs like "Dateline", "Abrams Report", or local news stations (which are referenced as "NBC affiliates"). In fairness, Joe Scarborough had the week off, and perhaps most of the show's staff also had the week off. With nobody around to do any actual journalism, I can only speculate that the show's producers decided to re-run the same tired old stories, bring on the same tired guests, and rehash the same tired discussions that yield nothing new and thus by definition are not news.

Another astounding aspect of the show's topics were the perfect shutouts scored against some of the biggest stories. There was zero time dedicated to the Supreme Court, the war in Iraq, and the brewing Plame-gate scandal. In a week that saw an up-coming Iraqi referendum on a newly drafted constitution, continued wrangling over the Supreme Court nomination, and impending indictments against White House staffers, there was not a word or whisper of these stories in "Scarborough Country". But there was time, on three consecutive nights, to discuss the salacious details of an NFL player's boat party. There was also time to have guests come on the show to discuss if the paparazzi are harassing celebrities.

The week's only (faint) glimmer of substantive and meaningful journalism was some continued coverage of the FEMA/Katrina recovery and a four-minute segment on the state of the armed forces with guest retired general McCaffrey. McCaffrey, as always, had some interesting thoughts and insights into the military's current recruitment deficit, Iraq war veteran health benefits and the future make-up of the armed forces. Details are shown in the table below.

Topic - week starting 10/10/05	M	T	W	Th	F	Total min.
Supreme Court	0	0	0	0	0	0
Iraq War	0	0	0	0	0	0
Katrina/FEMA	6	6	9	12	5	38
Rove/Plame	0	0	0	0	0	0
Avian Bird flu	0	5	0	0	0	5
missing person (Holloway, Behl, Wilson, Olvia Newton-Johns Boyfried, "Shocking baby Horror")	17	20	23	23	20	103
NOPD beating of man	10	5	7	0	0	22
State of the military, recruitment, war vet. medical benefits.	0	0	0	0	4	4
Miscellaneous (sharks, pythons, police crash, paparazzi, CA dog law, SC Champion)	9	5	0	4	7	25
NFL Viking's wild party	0	0	3	4	5	12
Total minutes	42	41	42	43	41	209

West Wing meets... huh? "The West Wing"? This administration should just pack up and move to a Hollywood set if they're going to script and rehearse scenes of Bush getting reports from troops in the field. They could rent the set from NBC's "The West Wing". Or better yet, the administration could rent out the White House to NBC. Shooting the show on location would add a certain feeling of authenticity that is otherwise lacking from its real-word counterpart.

From contrived town hall meetings to rehearsed teleconferences with soldiers, it seems as though this administration has a distaste or dislike for genuine interaction with the hoi polloi. The first thought that came to mind when I heard about the scripted teleconference with soldiers in Iraq was “misanthropist”. Actually my first reaction was complete disbelief. My second reaction was that it’s almost as if there’s an aversion to getting in touch with or having any contact with the people they govern. One can't help but be cynical when the president goes to these lengths to stage nothing more than him simply doing his own job. This can’t possibly help those downwardly spiraling poll numbers. When is someone in the administration going to stop the bleeding?

Tucker Carlson shows his true partisan colors:

10/12/2005 - "The Situation with Tucker Carlson"
MADDOW: the Republicans, with all other nominees, have said Democrats are being obstructionist for wanting to see documents, for wanting to see a paper trail, for wanting to get questions answered in the judiciary committee hearings, and now all of a sudden, the Republicans want those things for this nominee.
CARLSON: Well, 99 percent of the time that‘s a fair charge. Democrats have been obstructionist. In this case, that‘s a ridiculous charge. It‘s actually conservatives who are being obstructionist, and good for them.

So according to Tucker it's a good thing to obstruct a nominee when you have questions about their qualifications and positions on issues, IF you happen to share Tucker's opinion of that nominee. At least the guy comes right out and says it. He has a very basic and unabashed double standard. Simply put, Democrats are almost always in the wrong (99% of the time) and Republicans, when doing the same thing Democrats do, are in the right. This is the very definition of a partisan hack. Your side is always right, the other side is always wrong. Your side can criticize the president and has legitimate concerns, the other side is being obstructionist and perhaps un-American or unpatriotic. It's this kind of divisive attitude and diametric partisan framing of the issues that hurts the political process and hurts the discussion. The Republican senators that are concerned about this Supreme Court nominee have a duty to have their concerns addressed and their questions answered. Republicans have an obligation to their constituents, and the constitution, to determine if a nominee is appropriate for the position they are being nominated. Now repeat the previous two sentences and replace the occurrence of "Republican" with "Democrat". If your agreement or disagreement with those two sentences changes with the changing of the words "Republican" or "Democrat" then you are a partisan lackey.

I switched to a new template from blogger templates. It seems the comments feature is hosed for firefox. It should be fixed now for IE. Sorry if you tried to leave a comment...

This past week was a big week for news, especially in national politics. But how well does the mainstream media cover the stories and issues that really impact Americans? This post is my attempt to quantitatively track one small sample of the overall MSM news coverage, namely MSNBC's "Scarborough Country". I intend to post my results each week, and analyze what is good and bad about Joe Scarborough's news coverage.

As I've said in previous posts, my sense is that overall the MSM does a pretty shoddy job of covering the news, current events and issues of public interest and importance. Generally the media seems dominated by celebrity trials, or sensationalized, shocking crimes and trends towards what used to be the sole domain of the tabloids. But I don't really have any way to quantify why I feel this way. It's really a general sense I get from watching the cable news channels and reading MSM web sites. In the past I've had posts that quantify the apparent obsession with a few criminal cases, and a seemingly disproportionate amount of media coverage. For last week's "Scarborough Country" this feeling certainly seems to hold true. Before getting into the specifics of last week's coverage I'd like to qualify how my data was collected.

I Tivo'ed each show (gotta love Tivo!) and watched the show noting the show's topic, and the start and end time of each topic, as shown by my Tivo's time bar. It should be noted that the Tivo time bar is in minutes. Consequently I cannot measure more precise than the minute readings. Thus, there is a truncation error (maximum of 59 seconds) that may occur at the beginning and end of each measurement. I assume this error is randomly distributed and should not greatly impact the results. My data is not precise down to the second, but I will also say that it is accurate. I do not count time given for commercials, time given for MSNBC's news update, and time where Joe Scarborough is introducing the show and its topics. The remaining time, which I record for each topic, I refer to as "useful on-air time" or simply "useful time".

Looking at the distribution of last week's show (see pie chart above), it seems that my general sense of disproportionate news coverage certainly holds true for last week's "Scarborough Country". I don't even know where to begin in pointing out how lop-sided the show's coverage was. How about zero time dedicated to the war in Iraq? That seems crazy. What also seems crazy is that Joe dedicated more time to bash actor Donald Sutherland's remarks about Bush than he did talking about Tom Delay and the Rove/Plame case combined. Joe Scarborough took time in his broadcast three days in a row to basically call Donald Sutherland a sissy, overly emotional, and imply that he's being a bad American by criticizing Bush overseas.

The good aspect of the show has to be the amount of time dedicated to hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction efforts, which took up the largest proportion of the show's time for the week (one third). There is huge public interest in following that story. There are billions of tax dollars being spent (and miss-spent) to recover from the hurricanes and the American people deserve answers as to why the government was so inadequately prepared.

Unless you are the friends and family of Natalie Holloway (Alabama high school student missing in Aruba, as if I had to clarify that) or George Smith (missing cruise ship honeymooner) it seems that the coverage of these two high-profile cases is completely disproportionate. Granted that these are two very tragic cases, and I certainly hope they are solved soon, but no one could possibly argue that this is as important or tragic as the hurricane disaster. Yet these two cases were given virtually the same focus and attention as the hurricane disaster. Last week Joe Scarborough even addressed the criticism leveled at his show for the amount of coverage given to the Holloway case. His defense was that there is something about the case that just makes Americans care. There's no doubt Americans care. And I'm sure the local community in Alabama has mobilized to do what they can to help and get answers. I'm sure the congressman and senators from that state are involved. But I don't see why this case needs national attention or how it is that Joe Scarborough feels that two missing person cases deserve as much focus as the hurricane reconstruction or the Supreme Court nomination. Like I've said in the past, unless it's Dick Cheney missing in Aruba, why on earth is it getting so much national attention? By the way, the Supreme Court nomination accounted for 9% of the show, while the controversy dominated many other headlines. Joe Scarborough just seems completely out of touch on that one.

The details for last week's shows are shown in the table below.

Topic - week starting 10/03/05	M	T	W	Th	F	Total min.
Supreme Court	6	0	7	6	0	19
Iraq War	0	0	0	0	0	0
Katrina/FEMA	20	13	4	13	19	69
Tom Delay	0	4	0	0	0	4
Rove/Plame	0	0	0	3	0	3
missing person (Holloway, Smith)	19	12	23	10	4	68
Ashley Smith, drugs/religious redemption	0	0	0	2	8	10
Donald Suterland's remarks on Bush	0	3	2	4	0	9
Miscellaneous (god's wrath, pythons, police crash, sea lions, Kate Moss, porn & media)	0	10	6	4	8	28
Total minutes	45	42	42	42	39	210

Last night Scarborough Country dedicated an entire segment of the show to debating whether Katrina's destruction of New Orleans and Mississippi was the wrath of god. Once again Scarborough Country comes through with hard-hitting journalism and important discussion of the issues that most affect America. No less than three guests were invited on the show to share their viewpoint on this vital and pressing issue in the gulf coast reconstruction effort.

Sarcasm aside, this is a typical example of how the media has become cheap and lazy. Instead of doing real investigative journalism, instead of researching issues, checking facts, sending people out into the field to put together informative and thoughtful reports, they slap together these low-budget, heated yelling sessions about some complete non-issue. With the show dedicating close to 25% of its useful on-air time to nonsense like this, you'd think there was a dearth of important topics and news to cover. Next time Scarborough Country is in desperate need to fill their air time with something (anything), and topics like Iraq war, supreme court nominations, budget deficits, gulf coast reconstruction, disaster preparedness, and government corruption (to name a few), don't seem to come to mind, here are a few suggestions:

1. Give an update on the Cambodian Midget Fighting League.
2. Interview a vampire or druid.
3. Have Joe Scarborough bust out into a Gregorian chant for 10 minutes (or required time).
4. Explain the importance of the media in a democracy (or get someone that can).
5. Lastly, explore topics vital to the functioning of a healthy democracy (see #4).