"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
stuff snipped

But I would submit that there already is by the very existence of the
pack. I want someone (or actually many someones) to break out of the
pack and do their freaking jobs.

But they do. Only one source broke the John Edwards story. Everyone else
missed it. The system breaks down on occasion, but what human-engineered
system doesn't? What concerns me more is the lack of statehouse coverage
that's evolved as local papers pull back on funding because that's where I
got my start - interviewing then Gov. Marvin Mandel long before he went down
in flames. It saddens and worries me that now starving small local papers
just can't afford to maintain a remote bureau covering state news and so it
goes largely uncovered nowadays and that's not a good thing.

I worry that news divisions have to pay their own way now, and they've never
been a profit center so they have become more and more "infotainment" than
news organizations. I cringe when watching Fox news they announce the
standings in American Idol as if they had equal rank with important national
and world news. These are things you should be worried about, not an
obvious edit for time that "seems" racist to a bunch of boneheads.

Newscasts shouldn't have to work to the lowest common denominator. Plenty
of people truly believe that the world was created 5,000 years ago despite
the existence of museums where they can actually touch million-year-old
fossils. They believe those fossils are part of a plot by atheists to
undermine God's "true word." Should we cater to people *that* deliberately
ignorant of reality and science? I think not.

I am watching the effing History Channel now and it's all about Civil War
ghosts. I'd say that's proof we can't afford to dumb down the news for
people with IQ's on a par with my dog's. If they can't undestand that "he's
black" is just a description and not a racist comment, they need to smarten
up. The news doesn't need to dumb down. That way lies madness.

It worries me that because the trend is now to get two talking heads
explaining a news event from each side, that we end up with a segment where
the Florida AG is paired with Rev. Al Sharpton as if somehow the two had
equal credentials. Watch for it and you'll see it happening time and time
again. Senator Bob Dole v. the head of some weenie home schooling
coalition.

Home schoolers typically want to withdraw from the normal educational system
so they can perpetuate religious ignorance and teach Creationism (more aptly
named Cretinism) to their usually very poorly socialized offspring. At
least the smarter religions have moved on to the less-easily disproved
"intelligent design" theory which more than a few scientists acknowledge may
have some merit. I even believe it's possible there's some animating force
to the Universe that we have yet to identify or understand and I am pretty
skeptical.

It worries me that a once-respected newsman like Dan Rather could get so
easily hoaxed by Bush's alleged National Guard OER's without even thinking -
"did they have justified-type typewriters at National Guard centers that far
back?" That's a true functional problem in the media - the ease with which
it is hoaxed but that happens because of the time pressure. Remember the
balloon that everyone thought had a little boy on board? The lapses are
endless because the process of gathering news is so messy and granular.

But I *don't* worry that some news consumers are so ignorant about news
gathering that they read racism into things that aren't racist. To me, GZ's
"these assholes always get away" is far more damning than "he's black." But
neither means very much in terms of racism. It more clearly points to a
guy, concerned with a rash of burglaries in his community that he felt the
cops were not paying enough attention to, and I think that's a correct
reading. Cops don't care much about B&E's and never did.

Let's turn this around. What else *could* he have said to describe TM well
enough so that a responding cop might be able to ID him? "He has horns?"
"He was flying through the air?" "He smells funny?" "He's wet?" "He's
carrying ice tea?"

To me, we're getting perilously close to the time I was a reporter and the
morons who I would quote *verbatim* in an article would call my editor and
complain: "That's what I *said*, but it's not what I *meant!*"

GZ described TM in a way that would make it possible for a cop arriving on
scene to recognize him. Saying he's black cuts the chance of
mis-identification in half. No other descriptor could do that. Not size,
not weight, not clothing. Now if TM had a gold front tooth and GZ saw it,
that could override color as the most helpful descriptor, but he didn't so
GZ went with black.

If "he's black" made some people throw a hissy-fit that's too bad, so sad.
They're idiots. The world's chock-full of them and it's *their* job to get
educated. You're almost sounding as if you expect the news media to be
nannies and lead these dopes by the hand to more intelligent conclusions
than they ones the seem able to reach with their own brainpower. That
doesn't sound like a true conservative to me. (-:

--
Bobby G.