MSNBC’s Morning Joe criticized for shaky Japan earthquake coverage. Some thought the casual, politics-heavy tone of Friday’s show was a bit weird considering the enormity of the Japanese disaster (which only seems to get worse by the hour). To be fair, producers may have reasoned that the tragedy was already being extensively covered on NBC’s Today Show.

CNBC’s Larry Kudlow is also taking some hits for his on-air comment that “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that.” To be fair to him though, he did immediately seem to realize that that didn’t come out too well and quickly attempted to walk the comment back, adding “The human toll is a tragedy; we know that. But these markets, all these
markets — stocks, commodities, oil, gold — there is no major breakout
or breakdown.” How successful his walk back was is in the eye of the beholder.

To Kudlow’s economic point, the Japanese quake (and resulting tsunami) is being blamed for a  disastrous weekend at the international movie box office — down a whopping 60% from the comparable
weekend in 2010.

Overall though, the news networks (and their correspondents) did an excellent job in covering the terrible disaster and deserve praise for it. It’s events like these that remind us that solid television journalism does still exist — and also of life’s ultimate fragility. There’s really so much to be grateful in merely having stable ground beneath our feet.

The Detroit Free Press is among the media doing a fine job in letting people know how they can donate to relief efforts. Its list of participating aid organizations is here.

Churches as film studios? Congregations are engaging the culture by creating their own movies like The Grace Card, Not Today and Courageous. Bravo. You can’t beat something with nothing. It’s not enough to just complain about the values of Hollywood movies. Believers need to actually create, market and distribute the movies we want to see and would like other to see.

It also should be noted though that, despite all the crap its spews out, Hollywood is still capable of producing really fine movies with strong, positive moral messages. For instance, I finally saw 2009’s Invictus, the Clint Eastwood-directed film about how Nelson Mandela (portrayed wonderfully by Morgan Freeman) utilized the game of rugby to help heal his nation after years of apartheid. The movie is a great reminder of not just what a great man Mandela is but also the power of forgiveness. As Mandela movingly says at one point in the film, “Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon.”

Advertisers vote against The Kennedys. Political pressure got the dramatic miniseries about America’s most-famous liberal Catholic family bounced from the History Channel and shunned by every other major network until it finally found a spot on something called ReelzChannel. Now, advertisers are steering clear of the hot potato too.  

Traffic surges 45% at The Wrap. Congratulations to the show business site — where some blogs by yours truly have been known to appear on occasion.