By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

No, it’s not a car from the Balkans

You can’t tell from the transcript, but during last night’s lengthy report on CNN’s “NewsNight with Aaron Brown” about Pat Robertson’s latest outrage – a televised call to assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez – the headline at the bottom of the screen read, “Hugo Who?”

Well, if the public doesn’t know who Chávez is, who’s responsible for that? Could it be, you know, the media?

This Wikipedia article on Chávez seems fair and balanced. If CNN’s not going to tell its viewers who Chávez is, perhaps it can suggest they read it rather than mocking them for their ignorance – ignorance for which CNN is partly to blame.

Just ask Bob Costas.


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3 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    Hugo is sitting on some nice oil reserves. That makes him the man in South America. It would be interesting if he sold out to China;every freaking barrel. Would gas prices rise to code red? Didn’t see Pat on any shows this morning. The former Marine knows when to keep his head down.

  2. Aaron Read

    If you get a chance, check out The Daily Show’s take on Pat Robertson’s vacation from sanity. Jon Stewart superbly sums up the three tactics the religious right are using to deal with this debacle, and does give Robertson the benefit of the doubt since he did say “assassinate” as a verb and not a noun, so he didn’t really mean it. 🙂 It’s linked from the homepage of Comedy Central as we speak (“Pat Sounds”).

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