Just saw yet another, relatively "uncensored" C-SPAN interview. In this interview, C-SPAN inquired about Y2K from Marcia Stepanek, one of Business Week's Technology Reporters.

Seemed to be more open than most interviews I've seen on CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc.

Time to do more than complain about the coverage, I say.

Let's give them feedback and grades (they hate grades, unless their good ones).

I haven't been watching enough to complete a list, but from what I have seen, C-SPAN gets the best for television, mostly because of their format of live wall-to-wall coverage of events; it tends to prevent the editing-syndrome-censorship bias AND the snide-remarks-from-hosts bias.

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), April 17, 1999

Answers

BTW, the "best" in terms of Y2K coverage would be a "C", IMO.

Can't wait to see the alphabet soup that the networks will be given...

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), April 17, 1999.

Sara,

You wrote:

"C-SPAN gets the best for television, mostly because of their format of live wall-to-wall coverage of events"

Ditto. You see the monitoring of public officials (usually), uncensored, as it happens. I'm with you.

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), April 17, 1999.

The news readers from the 3 major networks are in a tie for last on the quality and spin quotient of their y2k coverage. ABC does try on occaision. Amazingly I have seen very little on the problems with the post office on the major networks, major newspapers etc. It looks like ZIP mail will come to mean mail that was zapped into pile (on the floor). With most of the contingency plans that have been developed dependent on the U S mail as an alternate system to the internet, phones etc. won't people be surprised when the mail does not go through. The Pony Express did get there. Perhaps the iron triange- power, banking and transportation should have a 4th segment that is about to get sawed off.

-- Curly (amazed@dumb.aaa), April 17, 1999.

Some of you may find this article, which I wrote, interesting:

Y2K and the Failure (So Far) of the Press

It is being presented as part of a boo klet to the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, which began today in Las Vegas.

Scott Johnson
Editor,
y2ktoday

-- Scott Johnson (scojo@yahoo.com), April 17, 1999.

Scott,

I'm so glad you gave the link to that article. I think others who didn't hop over there can get a sense of it from this excerpt:

"...What we have not seen is real investigative reporting about specific assertions made by the federal government, auditing agencies, or large industries and their constituent companies.

In short, the press, in a hasty attempt to make broad predictions about or assessments of our general "Y2K situation, has failed to do the nitty-gritty job of actually reporting on the real problem at the micro level.

This is partly a function of the reality that media has, in general, become more sensationalistic in the 1990s. However, it also stems from an ill-advised desire to speak with authority about a technology problem that is unprecedented in scope, and one that no one  least off the average journalist on deadline  completely understands."

I'd add that the spectre of litigation has become a powerful disincentive to everyone involved.

Thanks for all of your dedicated work, Scott.

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), April 20, 1999.