On Wednesday I was able to leave late for work, so I took the opportunity to do something I haven't done in 15 years, maybe 20, and that is watch a morning network news show. For this exercise I picked Good Morning America on ABC.
I would like to save I was critical of their biased news reporting except that they didn't report anything that was news. They led with how Maria Schriver found out about Ahnold's love child. Then a story about sunscreen ratings. Then some rich woman bought a mansion somewhere. Then Nancy Grace came on to talk about the OJ - whoops, I mean the Casey Anthony trial. She kept referring to the defendant as "totmom". Real professional journalism there, Nancy.
They did have the newsreader on for 90 seconds. (Are we bombing Yemen?). But here are some things that ABC News didn't think was newsworthy. The ATF is being investigated over a program in which they sold automatic weapons to Mexican gangs in order to track the guns. One of those weapons was used to kill a Border Patrol agent. The president and Congress are about to clash over the War Powers Act in Libya. And Sarah Palin's emails revealed that she is a Satan-worshipper. (Okay, I made the last one up.)
I would have expected the tabloid stuff to run in their 8 AM hour. I know that George Stephanopolous spent half his adult life as Bill Clinton's manservant, But if the plan is to go TMZ if there is no good news for Obama, then the profession is in worse shape than I thought.
Nobody really thinks journalism is a profession except the journalists.
ReplyDelete"A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl."
ReplyDeleteErnest Hemingway