A long time ago — as I recall it was during a dinner having to do with a forthcoming boxing program at the War Memorial Arena — I was having a debate with a sports guy from a local TV station about journalism.
He was being his usual pompous self, indulging in orgy of self-promotion. I pointed out he actually was in show business, not journalism. Oh, he sniffed, and what do you mean by that? was basically his comeback.
Said I: “Because before I sit down at the keyboard to write, I don’t feel the need to slap on a wig and makeup.”
So it was often in discourse between print guys and TV types, the latter ones being those whom a print colleague used to dismiss as the “blow-dry boys.”
Understand, there were and are some very good TV journalists. But there were and are more superficial types on the TV screen.
Did you ever wonder why most whom you see on TV news or sports, particularly at the network level, are above average in terms of physical attractiveness? Are they truly the best journalists, or simply the best looking?
How about those sideline babes during sports broadcasts? I can think of only one prominent example who is not extremely attractive physically.
On the other hand, your average newspaper type (and I include myself in this category as a retired example) tends to be below-average in the looks department.
I tell you all this because my thoughts are on journalism today, for reasons both local and national.
First, the local. I tuned in a noon news broadcast Wednesday so my wife might see the weather, which for some reason she considers worth the effort. I tell her to dial up accuweather.com or weather.com on a computer or her smart phone at any time and she will get what she needs without having to sit through tedious reports on the latest about Centre County, Altoona, Clearfield or DuBois – this from a station whose main building sits in Upper Yoder Township less than two miles from my house.
On this day, the local anchor was relaying the arrest of the escaped murderer in Eastern Pennsylvania, an illegal immigrant by the way.
The video showed a Pennsylvania State Police spokesman, a Lt. Col. George Bivens. I’m thinking since it’s a rank before his name, he’d be a Lieutenant Colonel.
But the gifted journalist reading the script referred to him as a “Lieutenant Colonial.”
Call the Peabody Award people and don’t forget the Emmys.
Even as this fresh take on ranks was being shared, word nationally was that the White House Legal Counsel’s Office, an arm of the Biden Regime, had put out a warning to media covering the Impeachment inquiry regarding Biden.
Since the nation’s justice department, along with select state justice operations in deeply blue cities, have been weaponized to Get Trump!, the letter had all the earmarks of a this-could-happen-to-you communique.
Think of the scene in the movie “The Godfather” when the severed head of an enemy’s prize horse was left in said enemy’s bed. He got the you-could-be-next message as judged by his hysterical screaming.
It speaks volumes, considering the typical lapdog approach of LameStream media in covering Biden’s many foibles, that such a warning to the media even was thought to be needed from the Biden machine.
Perhaps it was due to their shock and horror that CNN, a usually dependable propaganda arm, had the temerity to fact-check Biden on many things, including the false claim that he had been at Ground Zero a day after the 9/11 attacks.
When a reporter asked a Biden spokesman about several of these Biden mistruths, the guy totally ducked the question.
But CNN, of all places, actually chronicled a bunch of Biden’s baloney. They began with the 9/11 claim. He actually got there nine days after the attack, not the next day.
CNN also recounted three instances in the same recent speech of Biden misstating facts ranging from claiming to have witnessed a Pittsburgh bridge collapse (he didn’t), claiming his grandfather succumbed a day before Biden’s birth in the same hospital (he’d died more than year earlier IN A DIFFERENT STATE!) and also recounting a favorite story about a conversation with an Amtrak conductor (he was dead by the time the supposed conversation was said to have taken place).
Journalism isn’t what it used to be, but perhaps CNN’s return to calling out mistruths by Biden is a welcome change of direction.
Or maybe, as a cynic might posit, the new marching orders from the Democratic Deep State machine are to wound Biden’s image seriously, that he might withdraw from the race and allow the Democrats to replace him with a candidate whose charisma and mental acuity are not on a cucumber level.
Sam Ross Jr's site 