I saw the same news story and had the opposite reaction: I think it is bad use of the public airwaves to list the dead in some sort of sentimental tribute. Better they should spend the time dissecting the policy decisions that caused the deaths. Listing the dead in such a grand pre-announced way is not informing as much as attention getting.

I prefer to leave that to the historians. The value of what Koppel's doing is that it might remind folks out there that the war is real and it's now. Thus "how did we get here" is less important than, "what are we doing now, and what should we do next." There are good arguments for staying, good arguments even for escalating the conflict. But what I really want is argument, debate, some sence of urgency. Right now, particularly here in Washington, it seems like the war is just some weird thing happening far, far away. It might as well be a tv series. And back to our regularly scheduled programming...

I don't see what the big deal is. McNeil Lehrer newshour (or whatever they're called now) has been doing this for a while. Just a rollcall of the names of the dead, scrolling by.

At the moment I read this post, the Jim Carroll song "People Who Died" started playing on WFUV. What a weird feeling. But instructive, too: Carroll doesn't just list his 13 dead friends, he explains how they all died (while a great guitar line pulses forward!). Koppel naming the dead is a stunt; noting *how* each one of those died would be a television landmark, a rare piercing of the data smog.

I can't help but think of Yom Hashoah, and the reading of the names of the dead. Sorry to Godwin.

Trying to leave Godwin behind, I can’t help but think of the appalling Super Bowl halftime show when U2 (they’re still Irish, right?) played in front of a giant sheet up which were crawling the names of the dead from the WTC. Oh, but then the song ended and the sheet crumpled and so did the facade of propriety, with a barely audible F*** YOU to anyone who died with a last name beginning with M through Z.

But no one watches the McNeil Lehrer Newshour, and those few that might are already, by definition, far more informed and hopefully thoughtful than your average Nielson viewer; I don't know if people watch Koppel's dateline, either (I havn't seen it since Buckwheat got shot!), but at least he's a fairly major figure in the American media scene.

And yes, U2's spectacle was tasteless. The whole superbowl-patriotism+9/11= entertainment thing is horrible.

Do more people watch CNN's Newsnight With Aaron Brown? They also do a roll call during their program.

To be honest with you, I don't think this will lift their rating measurements significantly: it's one night out of at least 20 during the period. Let's say their ratings for that night are up 100% (a doubling): that will only impact the month's figure by a mere 5%. And there's lots of room to question whether or not it will double the ratings. When you've heard roll calls at memorials for 9/11, how long have you watched? HOw long would you have watched if they weren't being read by surviving family members, but by Ted Koppell?

(I also bet they know TV well enough to figure that out, too: it's not like a weekly series that runs 4 times during the period.)

I think the hoopla over this is a lot of nothing, perhaps an effort by some to avoid confrontation with the unpleasant, a la Barbara Bush's "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day
it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my
beautiful mind on something like that?" remark. Perhaps they even want to suppress coverage.

My wife mentioned the Newshour listing of names too. But that is just one small part of the program. They do not try to make a statement by changing the Newshour to the Nameshour.

Barbara Bush said what?

Here's a link to the full Barbara Bush quote:

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/04/07_barbara.html

Uh-oh... Via Atrios, I learned that a major station group (representing about 25% of the country) is ordering its stations to not show the Friday Nightline. Al Franken has also said that the corporation is a major Bush contributor. Their statement reads, in part,

"Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."

Buckwheat got shot?

Yes, in front of the Washington DC Hilton.

Not in front of Paris Hilton?