Hasta la vista, 60 Minutes
Posted on | December 28, 2009 | 2 Comments
WaterWired and Aquafornia both have last night’s 60 Minutes report on California water embedded for your viewing pleasure. Be warned, WaterWired links back here. Those instantly overtaken by boredom whenever a speech (tv program, headline, fill in the blank) opens with the threadbare Twain quote “whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting,” be further warned: Lesley Stahl opens with it.
Beyond the cliches, the esteemed news magazine offers a decent potted version of our water woes. An empty promise of a free drink to anyone who counts how many times Stahl called the Delta smelt “tiny.”
On the subject of size, a couple of minutes, far fewer than 60, of checking crop output would have taken the enormity out of what the program suggests is a looming almond crisis says On the public record. That and a half-way energetic intern might have put a question mark over the stuff about Schwarzenegger’s “unlikely” political alliance with the Latino Water Coalition. Here’s a Capitol Weekly report about the origins of the governor’s stage army, which the giant network credulously took as an authentic grass roots movement.
Other than that, great work, CBS.
Update 12/29/2009: To see Aquafornia’s round-up of responses to the 60 Minutes broadcast, click here.
Comments
2 Responses to “Hasta la vista, 60 Minutes”
Leave a Reply
North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
December 30th, 2009 @ 8:17 pm
[…] Water tourism: “60 Minutes” visits California “60 Minutes” presented its take on California last Sunday: Why California is Running Dry (text and video). Like most outsiders, they ended up simplifying things down to “farmers vs. fish” — the fish in question being the “tiny” Delta smelt. […]
January 8th, 2010 @ 12:37 pm
[…] has Lesley Stahl snapped shut her dictionary of Twain quotes* used in the recent CBS show “60 Minutes” on the California water crisis as it’s been opened again to the same page — this […]