Dirty Dining

Quick hit only. The Dirty Dining segments on Journal Communications' TMJ4 I see a problem, big surpise.

They have had a few segments on successful, landmark restaurants, owned by white people, located in the suburbs or in nice downtown locations, where the restaurant's "executive chef" or owner has come on and said all the right things. This problem here was a short-term anomaly. That one we've fixed. This one was not as bad as it sounds. We're glad to find out about this problem so we can fix it. We strive for perfection, but it's hard to keep on top of everything. That's why we welcome the health department reports to let us know where to focus our continuing efforts so our diners can have confidence. All of these problems merit our attention and are being addressed, but none had progressed to the point of affecting our customers, and we're thankful for that.

The problem I see is that some of these responses would be applicable to most of the establishments who are covered in these segments. This diminishes the force of all of them, but that's not the problem. The problem is that when the target is some minority-owned small Indian or Mexican restaurant or fried chicken franchise, and the owners don't put up sophisticated damage control, the news media takes advantage of the bad response, lets them ignore their defenses, does not give any caviats, and sensationalizes the problems.

This is a direct cognate of the problem in the legal system where some criminally accused get ineffective counsel, the prosecution unethically pushes the advantage, and the judge allows it. There is a difference in that the media in cases like this plays the prosecutor while pretending to be a neutral investigator. The end result is racist, classist, and just plain unfair, and it misleads viewers and harms the community.

Thanks again, JCI.

A parable

A corrupt cop whose life has fallen apart breaks into a house of a personal enemy, ransacks the house looking for guns, and destroys the library and family heirlooms, including the family Bible and some irreplacable art. In his rampage he destroys the electrical lines and causes the toilet to overflow, and makes a general disaster of the house. He kills the man of the house, lets the dogs out, and then rapes the man's wife. Then he whispers sweet nothings to her, tells her he husband was evil and he's saved her, and expects her gratitude. He is about to leave with the family's cash when a sniper shot through the window wounds him. He goes to the woman he raped, and says, "this is your house; it's your responsibility; here's a gun; we'll defend the house together." He hands her the gun and turns his back and he's shot again. He says, "who did that?" turns and sees the woman running away. He says, "don't be scared. We can do this. Take my knife too." He turns his back and she shoots him again, and cuts off his penis.

U.S. in Iraq.

Two entries on recurring themes -- part one.

1. Channel 4 again...

Right after my last post, they did another piece with the godawful John Mercure. This was an expose on a single businesswoman with a spotty record with the Better Business Bureau. It would have been nice to get the BBB's website or some excerpts of actual reports, but no. The report had the following elements: (1) the guy from the BBB gave his overall assessment that he would not use this service; (2) a disgruntled client was interviewed, said how upset she was, and claimed that she had waited months and gotten none of the product she was promised; (3) an undercover hidden camera visit to the businesswoman posing as a client caught her on film suggesting that she had lots of business, and it was opined, how can she take new business on when she hasn't finished the old business, and (4) a confrontation was arranged straight out of Jerry Springer or Cheaters where the dissatisfied client took over the usual John Mercure role of screaming at the subject of the expose. There was an apparent disagreement over whether the client had put in a specific order for what she said she had waited for, but the report did not include a look at the e-mail they were arguing over, so we could not see who was right. Now again, as usual, it may well be that the businesswoman was crummy, and deserved to be exposed. But that isn't the point. This dreadful report went to a lot of effort but did not convince me of its conclusions. I'm a lawyer. I see where the indictment had holes in it. I'm also a journalist and don't like the conclusion-driven reporting here. Instead of "We report, you decide" as Fox News promises but does not deliver, there is no pretense here of reporting. They have a conclusion which they present, and support with shaky, emotive, prejudicial evidence, and deny us the basic facts we would need to make a competent decision. This has led me to a lot more thought about the relationship between the news media and the legal system as alternative discursive fora where the truth is argued and opinions reached. The MSM, at its best, typically follows some of the guidelines of the legal system and disregards others, which results in systematic flaws, but the system is at least earnest. This Channel 4 crap follows an entirely different schematic. More later.