A highlight of Innovation 2008 was the keynote address by Ira Flatow, the host and Executive Producer of Talk of the Nation: Science Friday on NPR. His weekly show features interesting and lively discussions on science, technology, health, space, and the environment and he also founded TalkingScience, a non-profit dedicated to creating media projects which make science 'user friendly'.
Ira spoke after Tuesday's lunch about science in the media with a focus on what makes it onto television. Given yesterday's post highlighted an example of the ever-blurring line between news and entertainment, it's worth sharing the JibJab clip included in his talk:
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The people at JibJab are good at making these videos but what's their message? The blindingly obvious point that American news coverage sucks? We already have "The Daily Show" for that and their writers are ORDERS of magnitude funnier than JibJab. They should put their creativity to better use. While I enjoy Ira Flato's show he does work for NPR which is part of the goddamned problem. Plus, aren't the networks giving "us" what "we" want?
A lot of this stuff dates back to a merging of advertising and news media cultures back in the 80's (check out this cameo by Rupert Murdoch).