There are too many complainers in these here All they do is complain, complain, and complain.
It’s the same kind of complainers who sit on their collective asses, watch television talk shows or listen to local/national radio call-in programs and actually believe everything they see on television and hear on the radio is true.
I wish I could believe in the news media as a whole or its members, some of whom I still see from time to time, having been in the news business a long time ago, yet it’s changed from bad to worse, mostly overtaken by corporate conglomerate companies with executives who dictate how the news should be presented.
Many of these companies will tell you their first obligation is to present the news, yet with a twist; the very idea to get their own agendas and viewpoints hammered into viewers and listeners’ heads the first time with an earthquake Hollywood-like intensity and a little public relations thrown in for good measure and oh yes, before I forget, they must make a profit.
Ever since NBC was taken over by General Electric (G.E.) decades ago, who also just happens to have within its patent arsenal the MX-missile, I doubt anyone of us will ever see anything bad about the bomb. Stories about electricity companies and its entities will also not get as much negative press either on NBC or its affiliates, not as long as someone like G.E. owns them.
Strange how that works itself out; reminds me of the time I was a young reporter working for a northwest suburban newspaper in the Chicago-area in the early 1990s and our newspaper staff had to write advertorial news; translated it means writing a positive article on a business that advertised with our newspaper.
The trouble with doing those kinds of stories was how dishonest the newspaper was being to us reporters and how the wrong lesson was being taught to us. Sure a newspaper needs to generate ad revenue, but not by having its staff writing happy, bogus stories about its advertisers! The worst part of it was, when the advertiser had final say so what went into the story and the editor agreed with the advertiser and not the reporter!
If there is ethics in the news or publishing business, I fail to see them, as there are so many irregularities in both. The worst types of ethics I run across are those that manipulate the truth and present it as fact, when the opposite is true.
Anybody with a computer or a blog is a reporter these days; anybody who calls into a radio or television stations with an eyewitness account of a robbery, fire or car wreck is a reporter. Anybody who hasn’t studied journalism yet uses the jargon and mannerisms of a journalist is a reporter.
If anything I measure true journalists and writers this way; anyone can write a sentence. Anyone can write a paragraph. Try editing it down. Therein lays the key to success.
