"Educate Erin" movement gaining momentum.

[bleever]

Dateline October 14, 2011:

Despite initial negative reactions to her newly premiered program's ostensible stance regarding the massive citizen protests in defense of Wall Street, a significant portion of the inaugural viewing audience still held out hope that Erin Burnett would splash some cold water on her face when she wakes up early the next morning, and bring her journalistic curiosity to bear on the questions thrust into her face.

Literally, almost: giant billboards featuring Burnett's face look down on the #OWS crowds gathered in New York City.

While seemingly compelled by her employment by a major media corporation to comply with the conventional wisdom that Wall Street knows best, even when it derails and puts a chokehold on the economy that cuts off the simple flow of customers, cash, and good will between businesses (from the smallest to the incomprehensibly massive), and the market at large, certain endorsements of her talent and integrity have been proffered in some quarters that give rise to the hope that as her new venue gains unexpectedly large exposure, due to what might be considered an accident of history, her reporter's instincts will propel her to an examination of the nature of the movement that has brought thousands of people into Wall Street and public squares across the nation, and indeed the world, and that it will result in a fresh examination of the nature of the struggle between the vast portion of people who feel that opportunity has been systematically siphoned out of our economic system and those with the resources to control it, and that she will find that she has the voice to report intelligently about the economic landscape that Americans have to function in currently, rather than being a de facto promoter of the system that has created that landscape.

There has been a fair amount of sniping at Burnett and her jabs at the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Much of this is due to interviews Burnett recently conducted with protesters, in which she posed dismissive questions to interviewees implying that they were ignorant of the facts regarding the government's rescue of large portions of the nation's financial sector.

But there has also been, in the idiosyncratic way that is unique to the internet age, an upswell in the sentiment that Burnett, far from being (at least with this program) a lost cause, could come into her own with a fresh and savvy perspective on the brave new world where Wall Street dominance meets Main Street defiance.

Enter the "Educate Erin" movement.

Whether or not this kind of feedback can be a pioneering moment that catalyzes the interaction between the broadcast media and the instant feedback of the internet remains to be seen.

But nobody likes to be left behind. It's fair to assume that that includes Erin Burnett.


#EducateErin

[Electric Monk]

1. k&r nt

[bleever]

2. I hope the unrec didn't come from anyone in CNN management.

:shrug:

[Enthusiast]

3. It probably did.

[Electric Monk]

4. I've noticed that people who have a vested interest in not understanding usually seem to

have a great difficulty with understanding.

Funny, that.

[bleever]

13. Yep. And yet, I hoped her self-interest might include not being a national laughing-stock,

and wanting to have a TV show that lasts longer than the OWS protests.

Making all that money and being relevant depends, at least to some extent, on retaining some credibility.

[truedelphi]

9. We need to put pressure on our local PBS stations to offer us up

Real alternatives.

I spoke with a friend of mine who lives in a very conservative area of Missouri, yet his PBS station offers up two hours of Russia Today.

Plus he gets the BBC. We are ina liberal area of California, and have cable because the only programs you can count on San Francisco's PBS station for are endless cooking shows.

[bleever]

5. I know this was kind of an aspirational post, but #OWS

has made me more optimistic of what is possible when people take a chance on showing faith in each other.

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. With all sincerity, good luck. It's worth a try at least

I grant that she is a bright woman. Time will tell how flexible and independent her thinking can become. She's not there yet.

[bleever]

7. As your excellent OP stated, we're in uncharted territory.

New alignments are a hallmark of #OWS, and when the Teamsters are joining protests, who knows what's possible.

[Kingofalldems]

8. She's pretty, she better than everyone

[jpak]

10. Burnett dates banksters - she feels she's one of them

poor thing

:rofl:

[sabrina 1]

17. She worked for Goldman Sachs. She is engaged to

a CEO of Citi Bank. She also worked for CNBC. She is on the side of the Banksters. She is Fox material, and now of course since CNN is trying so hard to BECOME Fox, she probably belongs there also.

I doubt there is much hope for her. Watching her disastrous attempt to play 'gotcha' with the most popular movement in the world right now, made it clear that she has no sense of anything outside of her own very small world.

She does serve one purpose, she unwittingly demonstrated the urgent need to add to the list of demands the restoring of standards to the US MSM. She is the poster girl for all that is wrong with the Media and the role they played in the current state of this country.

She managed, in what was supposed to be her out-Foxing Fox moment, to actually do that. She now has the unenviable position of being the symbol of all that is wrong with our media, if anyone should ask. That distinction used to belong solely to Fox.

I don't share the OP's hope that she can learn. But miracles do happen so who knows.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

11. She seems pretty smug and full of herself

At this point in her life, given her attitude, I don't think she's going to really change. She doesn't strike me as someone who's going to take lessons in anything.

[bleever]

12. Keith Olbermann, at the end of a recent segment about her, made the offhand comment

that she was a good person and a good journalist (despite her recent obtuseness).

That was what got me thinking along these lines, but I think you're right that smug and rich don't usually go with serious inquisitiveness.

[chervilant]

14. Wow...

You're describing Satyagraha. How amazing to see these young activists--and online activists--use the very tools that Gandhi and his followers used so effectively to end British tyranny in India!

Would that we could enlighten the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michele Malkin, Glenn Beck, etc. ad nauseum...a girl can dream, can't she?

[Enrique]

15. you'd have just a good a chance with educate Lawrence Kudlow

or Educate Stuart Varney, or Educate Lou Dobbs, or Educate Neil Cavuto. She doesn't look like them, but she is them. Any good journalism she does, she must be doing it in secret.

[bleever]

16. The only difference is that Burnett won't have a show for very long if she doesn't

bring something other than the knuckle-dragging Faux News business "acumen" displayed by the guys you mention.

Adapt or die, for her.

Being compared to Stuart Varney alone ought to put the fear of death in anyone. :)