It was many years ago, but the memory lingers of the first time I was embarrassed to be a journalist. It was a steamy summer afternoon and reporters and photographers were shoehorned into a small Manhattan apartment for a civic group’s announcement.
As we waited, a photographer wearing a “Press” card in his battered fedora picked up a bud vase from a table, pulled out the rose and drank the water in one gulp.
The hostess was horrified and shrieked, “What are you doing?” He looked at her as if she were nuts and said simply, “It’s hot in here and I’m thirsty.”
I laugh now at the outlandishness of the photographer’s behavior, but at the time I cringed and wondered: Do I really want to be a journalist and end up like that?
America should be so lucky now. Bad manners are the least of it.
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DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
4 comments:
This story tells just how journalism, especially that surrounding the President, has taken a dive like a boxer who owes the Mob.
When and why did our formerly trusted news sources turn to full-time lying and whining, only to do more of it even after being outed by the truths told by the tiny number of independent journalists who still value what journalism was and should be? Only the MSM can provide an accurate and full answer, but don't be holding the collective breath waiting for it.
I believe the matter to be a bored general public that is only stimulated by sensationalism. Most live hum drum lives with no excitement other than seeing a car pulled over with a trooper issuing a speeding citation. How many times have we been at the grocery and watched the folks ahead of us in line gawk at the "juicy" tabloids on display but too embarrassed to actually buy the rag. News print is in decline thanks to technology and day to day stuff is mundane, so, reporters have availed themselves to radical embellishment and the editors are willing to risk libel/slander and in the end can simply bury a retraction deep in the bowls of a late edition. Journalism today is a dead art.
The boredom factor has been growing for decades. Our millennial generation is the immediate victim, with all too many of its members mostly unresponsive to anything that doesn't have flashing lights or a lurid theme. One might look at any number of social ills among them that are reactions to the visual and auditory clang of what is presented to those young brains.
Hey! I resemble that mag reader in line Anon 7:39 AM. How else am I to find out about "alien" activity?
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