Have you forgot.....
What's happening with H5N1 Avian Flu? There use to be daily reports on watches on the spread of avian flu, the latest number of people killed, when it was going to reach North American, and how much we humans really are at risk. Searches of CNN.com yielded nothing, BBC.com was still running a very detailed section, and receives topic marks. Time.com had a blog entire from July 13th. What appeared to be the latest search result from MSNBC (07/07/06) was actually written in October of last year. Reuters.com probably had the most current news informing us that today (07/19/2006) the 42nd human died from H5N1 avian flu in Indonesia. The Associated Press only had one hit for the last seven days. I even tried foxnews.com, just for kicks; their most current was from June 23rd informing us that H5N1 had mutated for human transmission.
*Searches performed with "H5N1 Avian Flu" for all agencies.
How about New Orleans and the reconstruction after hurricane Katrina? Here's what they had to offer:
CNN.com - focused article on health care staff accused of killing patients
BBC.com - again top marks extensive in depth coverage.
Time.com - excerpt address the estimated miss use of $2B in Katrina funds.
MSNBC - decent with a questionable top result (at time of writing reports on Emmy Nominations for coverage during the disaster)
Reuters.com - respectable
Associated Press - respectable
Foxnews.com - laughable (top New Orleans news story at time of writing, you have to read this)
* Searches performed with "New Orleans" for all agencies
What else has fallen by the wayside? Iraq (momentarily); Darfur conflict in Sudan (anyone even remember this?) Rebuilding after the 2004 Tsunami? (200k plus were killed, remember?) Iran? North Korea (they were firing missiles not more than 2 weeks ago)? I'm ashamed that I can' remember more... what have you been allowed to forget?
More important... what's the latest good piece of news you can remember? Someone please tell me they have something better than this.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Monday, July 17, 2006
Adding to the no Travel List
Well up until about a week ago, my no travel list was fairly short: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Congos (Democratic Republic, Republic). Considering there are 194 countries in the world, not too bad.
The events of the last week would have me adding Israel, Lebanon, and Syria to the list. Admittedly I didn't have any real plans to go to any of these places, and they were definitely towards the bottom of the list.
I don't know enough history to even begin to try and dissect this conflict, so I won't. What I've found interesting over the last week is the shift in media focus. If you picked up a paper today or cruised major media websites you'd find nary a hint of the nuclear issues with Iran, or escalating the missile/nuclear issues with North Korea. History will tell us which of these conflicts is the more important and where we should have focused our attention, but one does have to admire the medias ability to very quickly shift or divert our attention from one part of the world to another. And in reality there is very little that we can do about it. True, with the the Internet there is greater access to search out different points of view, or seek out news stories. The reality is that in general the media has the ability to saturate the market and shift our focus at will.
Will big media help me with two questions: 1) was this the plan all along? and more importantly 2) has anyone else in our governments noticed?
The events of the last week would have me adding Israel, Lebanon, and Syria to the list. Admittedly I didn't have any real plans to go to any of these places, and they were definitely towards the bottom of the list.
I don't know enough history to even begin to try and dissect this conflict, so I won't. What I've found interesting over the last week is the shift in media focus. If you picked up a paper today or cruised major media websites you'd find nary a hint of the nuclear issues with Iran, or escalating the missile/nuclear issues with North Korea. History will tell us which of these conflicts is the more important and where we should have focused our attention, but one does have to admire the medias ability to very quickly shift or divert our attention from one part of the world to another. And in reality there is very little that we can do about it. True, with the the Internet there is greater access to search out different points of view, or seek out news stories. The reality is that in general the media has the ability to saturate the market and shift our focus at will.
Will big media help me with two questions: 1) was this the plan all along? and more importantly 2) has anyone else in our governments noticed?
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