Category Archives: Television

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So this funny thing happened last night

My friend, Chris, hosts (and I think helped create) a cool new gameshow on NBC called The Wall. It’s a combination quiz show and giant Plinko board, and it ends up having a whole lot of very real tension and meaningful drama. I really, really like it. Chris is very funny and relatable as the host, and I love watching how much fun he’s having.

So last night on the Tweeters, this happened:

Anne was on the other end of the couch when that happened, and I laughed so hard I startled our dogs who were between us.

 

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Last night, KCAL credulously repeated Trump’s lies about Sprint.

If you turned on the news yesterday, you probably heard this story about Donald Trump taking a phone call from executives at Sprint, working that Make America Great Again magic, and hanging up the phone with the promise of Sprint creating 5000 jobs for Americans. Trump says that “Because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they’re going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States.”

Wow. That’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? If it’s so easy for Donald Trump to get on the phone and make that happen, why can’t that loser Obama do it? Why does Obummer hate America so much?

Oh. Wait. Sorry. I fell into the Stupidsphere for a moment.

The truth is, Donald Trump lied yesterday, Sprint went along with his lie, and then an appalling number of news organizations repeated the lie so much, it’s become accepted as truth in less than 24 hours. This, in spite of the common knowledge that Donald Trump is constantly lying about everything.

Despite what Trump and the press release from Sprint said (and what its CEO recently tweeted), these jobs were part of a previous announcement from Softbank (Sprint’s parent company) CEO Masayoshi Son — not the direct result of working with Trump.

I saw this lie repeated last night on the 10pm broadcast of my local news on KCAL 9, here in Los Angeles. It was upsetting to me, because KCAL is a trusted local news source for one of the largest media markets in the country, and it’s one of the only local news sources available to people who live here and don’t have cable or satellite. Here’s what I posted on Twitter about it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This happened on the 10pm broadcast. It wasn’t a fast-breaking story that needed to be covered as it unfolded. Trump’s claim that he worked his magic on the phone had been debunked many times, earlier in the day.

First of all, Sprint announced these jobs back in April. Here’s the Kansas City Star: “Sprint Corp. is launching a nationwide service to hand-deliver new phones to customers in their homes. The Direct 2 You service, which first rolled out in a Kansas City pilot, will lead to the hiring of about 5,000 mostly full-time employees as it spreads nationwide.”

Second, the Japanese owner of Sprint, Softbank, announced in October that it was creating a huge tech investment fund.

Third, in December, Softbank’s CEO announced the fund again after a meeting with Trump, and said that one part of the whole package was the creation of 50,000 new jobs. Today, Sprint reluctantly conceded that its 5,000 jobs were part of the previously announced 50,000 jobs.

And finally, these jobs were announced yet again today.

That makes four times these jobs have been announced. Donald Trump was responsible for none of them.

As I said last night, there’s a huge difference between “Trump makes jobs happen” and “Trump claims he made jobs happen”.

Jennifer Pierce, who apparently works at KCAL, responded to me:

The problem with this response is that it doesn’t address the fundamental issue: the lie isn’t about whether the jobs are new or not. The lie is that he had anything at all to do with the decision. I pointed that out:

All of this was easily researched and fact-checked in a matter of minutes by me, and I’m not a professional journalist whose primary job and responsibility is to inform and educate the general public. This leads me to draw one of two conclusions: 1) KCAL’s news director knew Trump was lying but went ahead and ran the story for some reason I won’t speculate about. 2) KCAL didn’t do simple and basic fact checking for some reason and reported a story that was fundamentally untrue as fact.

Either one of those is completely unacceptable for a news organization. A lot of people went to bed last night thinking that Trump did something he didn’t do. Today, they are telling their friends and co-workers that Trump personally made 5000 jobs happen, because they heard it on the news.

Once more, from Engadget:

This is where we are, folks: Our president-elect is tying his name to something he didn’t have anything to do with, much like he did with “saving” 1,100 jobs at HVAC company Carrier, including 300 that weren’t moving to Mexico in the first place. In November, Trump exaggerated that he stopped Ford from moving a Kentucky production plant to Mexico. In reality Ford announced it wouldn’t move production of one model line to Mexico.

The most troubling thing here is that Sprint played along, even though, when pressed, it admitted the claims weren’t the result of working with Trump.

I would argue that the most troubling thing here isn’t actually that Sprint went along with Trump’s lie (Sprint wants deregulation, Trump wants to take credit for something he didn’t do, so they both benefit by agreeing to deceive the public). The most troubling thing here is that news organizations whose only job is to inform and educate the public, became an integral part of spreading this lie, and giving it credibility.

In this morning’s Plum Line in the Washington Post, Greg Sargent advises that the media stop giving Trump the headlines he wants, and, you know, do their job:

I would like to propose a rule of thumb for these situations: If the headline does not convey the fact that Trump’s claim is in question or open to doubt, based on the known facts, then it is insufficiently informative.

[…]

Look, it’s obvious that Trump has adopted a strategy of actively trying to game such headlines in his favor. Trump’s claims about Carrier jobs staying in Indiana turned out to be significantly less rosy upon closer inspection. And remember when Trump falsely claimed credit for keeping a Ford plant here that was going to stay anyway? It really doesn’t take much to convey it in a headline when Trump’s claim is in doubt.

[…]

Now that it’s obvious that President Trump will strategically employ exaggerated announcements of “saved” jobs to rig the headlines in his favor, maybe it’s time to rethink how to handle that, too.

We need to hold news organizations accountable, so that they will hold Trump (and anyone in government) accountable..

A lot of people don’t have the time, energy, or resources to separate truth from lies, and it’s not unreasonable for those people — for all of us, really — to expect fact checking from news directors and their reporters. Last night, KCAL failed in that primary responsibility. The 10pm broadcast I watched didn’t report the truth of this story; it amplified and gave credibility to a lie. That’s not okay, and KCAL should apologize to its viewers and correct the story.

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these violent delights have violent ends

Seven days of a post a day, and it’s starting to feel like it’s okay to do stuff that isn’t super intense or deep, though I’ve discovered that instead of just posting whatever, I’m racking my brains for something heavy or at least in depth to write about. I guess I’m learning how to think with different parts of my creative self or whatever.

I got this thing called the triby from woot because it was on sale (I know, just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean you have to buy it) and though it has a terrible name (m’lady)*, it’s been a lot of fun to talk to Alexa on it throughout the day. It’s kind of cool that I can ask it to play me a news update, and it’ll cycle through about 10 minutes of news stuff from local to national to world news, then give me the weather. I keep wanting to thank it, the same way I want to thank my phone when Ok, Google, does something for me.

I kept hoping, all season long, that there would be some visual easter egg that gave a nod to the 1973 movie.

Hey speaking of self-aware robots: how about Westworld? I kept feeling like there was a good show inside whatever I’ve been watching for ten weeks, so I stuck with it, enduring awful exposition, two characters that are either badly written, badly performed, or both, and a criminal underuse of Anthony Hopkins … but after watching the season finale, I’m so glad I stuck it out. I’m looking forward to going back and watching it again, knowing what I know now. I still think the entire Mayve storyline is crap and stresses my suspension of disbelief more than the existence of Westworld, itself, but the other primary storyline was wonderful, and really paid off. Memo to LOST: this is how you do it without an audience-insulting shit ending.

Have you seen Ex-Machina? If you haven’t, and you liked Westworld, I highly recommend it. There’s also a fantastic episode of Black Mirror from series two called Be Right Back that provokes a lot of the same questions. Anne and I have been wanting to start series three of Black Mirror, but we’ve been investing our limited television time watching Channel Zero and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

You know, there’s so much good television right now, I feel like I could do nothing but watch incredible shows everywhere from broadcast networks to cable to online-only, and there wouldn’t be enough time in the day to see it all.

 

*I know, it isn’t Trilby, but it’s close enough.

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the cookie told me so

Okay so the whole point of this Daily December thing is to just put something new here every day, and not worry about exactly what it is. We’re four — five? Wait. Did I miss a day?

Okay, I just checked and I didn’t miss a day. That’s weird. Time is a flat circle, man, I read about it in The Bearenstein Bears And The King In Yellow.

Anyway, this is a good exercise for me. Just post a thing that I care about, or think is cool for some reason, and don’t worry too much about it being something deep and whatever.

So.

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I don’t remember why I started doing “Goodnight, nerds” on Twitter, with a picture from Frinkiac, but now it’s a silly thing I look forward to every night before bed. I actually say to Anne, “I have to go tell the nerds goodnight” before I get into bed.

I usually hit the random button until I come across something from the first eight seasons or so. Occasionally something from the recent seasons shows up that’s really funny on its own, and I’ll grab it just in case, but I like to focus on the classics.

You know, for something dumb that I do to amuse myself, a put a lot of thought into it — well, more thought than you’d expect, I guess.

I don’t watch The Simpsons every week like I used to. We’ve both changed since the 90s, and I think it’s okay to move on and do other things. Shows like Bob’s Burgers and Bojack Horseman are more my speed these days.

I’m performing an audiobook all day today, so I have to get going, but I’m putting this here so I won’t forget: Bojack Horseman is a thing I want to write about in a little more depth when I have some time.

The 404 page at The Outline is pretty great.

 

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