Talk Nation Radio, for the week of June 23, 2010
Robert Jensen, Media in Age of Calamity, BP Spill update
We look at media coverage of the BP oil spill, of the drilling regulation "debate" and U.S. policy in the Middle east.
US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to break records for cost in dollars and lives and time served by US and other forces. In the meantime, the American people seem to be more at risk than ever of losing all hope of home ownership, or even financial security.
We look at media coverage of these leading cataclysmic stories, How can we improve the media and be more
actively engaged in helping?
Journalist Robert Jensen is at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a Ph.D. in media ethics and law from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He worked as a journalist for a decade prior to joining academia, and presently teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics.
Cataclysm One: There is a
discussion raging about how to save the Gulf of Mexico from BP's oil. The oceans provide us with air, and stabilize the atmosphere. What will thousands of barrels of oil per day going into the gulf do to the production of oxygen in the world's most effective lung system?
Scientists at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Minerals Management Service that granted BP deep water drilling rights, are frantically searching for ways to repair the problem. The head of America's joint task force on the containment operation, Admiral Thad Allen, is becoming more flustered as he tries to answer questions from a few of the more astute reporters. They have begun to press the Admiral and BP for answers about the scale of the disaster. Reading between the lines, when field reporters tell major TV news anchors that the oceanographers they interviewed are "terrified" we know there is something dark and terrible shaking the core of America's belief system that we are too big to fail.