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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

the breakfast table
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from: Katha Pollitt

Coming Up! Film at Ten!

Posted Thursday, May 7, 1998, at 11:25 AM ET

Good morning Andrew,

While you were putting on your designer duds to go watch South Park in a gay bar, I was turning one of Sophie's dresses into a mini while watching Fox News at Ten. (The Sixties fashion nostalgia was all her idea, by the way. I wanted her to do a report on the Supreme Court decision banning public-school prayer.)

Now I know it is not exactly a breaking story that TV news is moronic, but I have to say it really is amazing to watch half an hour of news that does not even mention any event, decision, debate or development in the world of politics or public policy, or refer in any way to people associated with that world. It was one lurid crime after another--a suicidal man who got shot by cops, a substitute teacher who threw chairs at the kids, the "Lyme Disease" defense of the Shelter Island man who killed his friend the alleged child molester. When they ran out of crime here in New York, they showed a police chase in California! The big consumer story involved a five-year-old girl who was upset because her parents gave her a video game that said "You Suck" when she lost. The anchors shook their heads reprovingly--such language! a little child! not nice! But of course the world that produces such games is the same world that produces Fox TV news.

But speaking of news that isn't fit to print, I'm always amazed at the stories that don't make it into the high-end, responsible "objective" press. Labor news, for instance. Foreign news. And foreign labor news, forget it! For instance, there's an amazing strike going on in Denmark now in its eleventh day--half a million workers (private sector), or one in five Danish workers. Polls show they have the support of more than half the populace, including more than 2/3 of Social Democratic voters (that's the governing party). The strikers want a sixth week of paid vacation, a six-percent raise, and six-hour days for shift workers. I think this is a pretty big story (I hear you chortling at the idea of taking anything that happens in Denmark seriously), a sign that there's quite a bit of resistance to the New World Order of lower wages and cutbacks. But like the French strikes and movement of the unemployed, and lots of other large-scale struggles, the Danish story got no coverage in the NYTimes or Wash Post except a mini-notice in the World roundup column.

You'd almost think they don't want Americans getting any funny ideas.

So, now that you've recovered from last night's revels, what stories do you think get shortchanged in the respectable press?

Cheers,
Katha

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Katha Pollitt

Coming Up! Film at Ten!

Posted Thursday, May 7, 1998, at 11:25 AM ET
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Katha Pollitt is a columnist at The Nation. Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the New Republic.
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