Today I saw a story that made my journalist’s skin crawl. Evidently Joe the Plumber is now going to be Joe the War Correspondent. He says he’s going to Israel to talk to some Israelis to get “the real story” because we’re not getting it. My opinion — this dude has totally dug his 15 minutes of fame and is milking it for all it’s worth. While I will admit that my initial reaction was that this had to be the “brainchild” of a particular network, it turns out he’s going to be “reporting” for something called Pajamas TV. What the…? Has anyone ever heard of this?
Also from the not-so-stellar word of TV news…President-Elect Obama met at the White House with the current and all the living former presidents. This is a big deal when you think about it — five men who have or will hold the highest office in one of the most powerful countries in the world all in the same room at the same time. Think of all they must know. But what do the reporters report on? How Obama and the two Bushes were wearing blue ties while Clinton and Carter were wearing red, how far they were standing apart and how they all ordered off the menu. Seriously, this is the best you can come up with?
Granted I’m a print journalist, but TV news is always amazing me with its idiocy. True, there are good TV journalists out there, but unfortunately they’re becoming overshadowed by these people who, OMG, have evidently never seen the inside of a journalism classroom. You’d think with a 24-hour news cycle on multiple networks, we’d get some wonderful, in-depth reporting from countries all around the world as well as from within our own country. Nooo. We get comparisons of presidential ties, Joe the Plumber heading off to Israel to tell us what’s “really happening” and crap like the latest antics of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.
Sigh. Somehow I don’t think this is what was intended when the First Amendment was penned.
January 10th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Hey, apparently we get our news from the same source
I saw this, too. Unreal.
January 10th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
TV journalism in this country sucks these days. It’s tabloid journalism, pure and simple. And every time ABC talks about their being the winner of “two Edward R. Murrow” awards, all I can think is if he was alive he’d be telling people not to be giving out the awards in HIS name, thank you very much.
January 10th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
*sigh* And that’s part of why I try to avoid watching the news, although that does mean I’m terribly uninformed about the state of the world on some days…
January 19th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Hey, girl, you hit the nail on the head with this one. I totally missed the presidential tie report, but I would have been laughing about that too. Surely there was something more important to report about than the color of their ties!!!! Holey Kamoley!!!
have to say, can’t wait til your next book comes out in a couple of months.
Hey, also, guess what??? There is a real bookstore in Murray, now. It is small, but hey, a bookstore is a bookstore. It is Book n Bean, and it is near where Pier One used to be.
January 19th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
You had a Pier One but not a bookstore?
January 20th, 2009 at 7:48 am
yeah, strange college town. The Pier One is actually gone now, too…..