Banfield re:Wiener-Savage. HAMMOND: Shrub Bored in Mid-Sentence

[UTUSN]

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http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix_u.htm

TV NEWS INSULT ONSLAUGHT

JUST weeks before right-wing firebrand Michael Savage was axed by MSNBC last year for making anti-gay comments, his colleague Ashleigh Banfield demanded Savage's head after he insulted her on his radio show. "Michael Savage called me a 'mind slut,' " Banfield told the crowd at yesterday's "Censorship or Common Decency?" luncheon sponsored by The Week magazine. "I complained to the president of NBC News and it went nowhere. But thankfully, a few weeks later he was fired anyway." (Banfield was recently dumped by MSNBC.) Panelists Bill Maher and Arianna Huffington locked horns with Fox News Channel's John Gibson and conservative columnist Michelle Malkin at Michael Jordan's Steakhouse in a debate that ranged from Janet Jackson's nipple ripple to the Iraqi prisoner photos. Maher's wisecracks elicited the biggest cheers from left-leaning attendees, who cackled when "SNL" mimic Darrell Hammond observed of President Bush: "I've never seen someone stop talking in the middle of a sentence because they're bored."

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[CulturalNomad]

1. Always struck me as a personable talking head - and not

a real journalist - what do others think?

[CulturalNomad]

2. actually - need to clarify - that's most of the US journalistic universe

except for a few 'bad apples' HA

[gasperc]

3. what a stupid sentence

Maher got the biggest laughs, but they quote Hammond?

[Bozita]

4. Banfield criticized the media's war coverage ... and lost her job

It was a speech at Kansas State, IIRC. She spoke her mind. She was taken off the air.

So much for the liberal press.

[w4rma]

5. Where does Banfield work now anyway? I thought that she was one of the few

journalists on TV who tried to do a good job of reporting the news.

[Bozita]

6. She's unemployed -- Here's her speech at Kansas State

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15778

MSNBC's Banfield Slams War Coverage
By Ashleigh Banfield
April 29, 2003

Editor's Note: The following is the text of MSNBC correspondent Ashleigh Banfield's Landon Lecture given at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, on April 24. Her comments sparked a media controversy which reportedly prompted her NBC employers to severely reprimand Banfield. While she has not commented on the issue, an NBC spokeswoman told reporters Monday, "She and we both agreed that she didn't intend to demean the work of her colleagues, and she will choose her words more carefully in the future."


Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. That was a very kind introduction. I would love to say that I'm a hero and was able to save this woman, but she was fine. I just gave her a quick checkover and she was just fine. But it was quite an adventure, nonetheless, and Chuck and I have a story to tell for the rest of time.


Thank you so much, by the way, for inviting me to be here. This is a real treat and a real honor. The last time I was in Manhattan, Kansas, there were a lot of other stories that were making top headlines, not the least of which were the anniversary of 9/11, the continued hunt for Osama bin Laden, the whereabouts of Elizabeth Smart, and what was to become of Saddam Hussein; and we have some resolution on very few of these stories, but we certainly know at least what Saddam Hussein is not up to these days, and it's leading Iraq.


So I suppose you watch enough television to know that the big TV show is over and that the war is now over essentially – the major combat operations are over anyway, according to the Pentagon and defense officials – but there is so much that is left behind. And I'm not just talking about the most important thing, which is, of course, the leadership of a Middle Eastern country that could possibly become an enormous foothold for American and foreign interests. But also what Americans find themselves deciding upon when it comes to news, and when it comes to coverage, and when it comes to war, and when it comes to what's appropriate and what's not appropriate any longer.


I think we all were very excited about the beginnings of this conflict in terms of what we could see for the first time on television. The embedded process, which I'll get into a little bit more in a few moments, was something that we've never experienced before, neither as reporters nor as viewers. The kinds of pictures that we were able to see from the front lines in real time on a video phone, and sometimes by a real satellite link-up, was something we'd never seen before and were witness to for the first time.

more...

[KoKo]

7. This is an interesting quote from her speech which should have gotten

more attention. Her comments about Faux News and telling "both sides" of the story also are a good read. I can see why they canned her. She spoke the "truth" and no one is allowed to do that anymore.

This comment is incredible given that she made the speech over a year ago. She might not have realized but this is almost a prediction. I wonder if the abuse in Abu Graeb is because the soldiers didn't see these "detainees" as more than tools in their own private porn fantasies. And, one wonders about soldiers not connecting with what they are killing because it's so easy with the push of a button.
Quote from her speech:

One of the things I wanted to mention about the technology of this war, because I know that we've got questions that we want to get to, so I'll just tell you a little bit about some of the technology and how that's changed, perhaps not only how the fighters behave, but how we see things.

The tanks and the vehicles that are used in the front lines are so high tech that an artillery engineer can actually pinpoint a target that looks like a tiny stick man on a screen and simply destroy the target without ever seeing a warm body.

"Some of the soldiers, according to our embeds had never seen a dead body throughout the entire three-week campaign. It was like Game Boy. I think that's amazing in two different ways. It makes you a far more successful warrior because you can just barrel right along but it takes away a lot of what war is all about, which is what I mentioned earlier. The TV technology took that away too. We couldn't see where the bullets landed. Nobody could see the horrors of this so that we seriously revisit the concept of warfare the next time we have to deal with it.