WHEN IS IT TOO MUCH? There is , at the moment, a bicker-back argument going on about TV news personnel and without any end in sight at any time soon.
The discussion has serious undertones I think, and I have felt the pressure of it at times when I happened to be choosing those news persons whom I felt best provided me with the kind of general news coverage I wanted to best met my particular need at the time.
I wanted, in them main, plain old-fashioned "Five-W-News" "News = north,east,west, south!"- as plain and factual as possible. I didn't object to a reporter injecting his or her opinion or comments as long as they were labeled as being such. I think I actually liked having them because their being present provided me with a free-standing, self-enlivened, wonder wall from which I might bounce my own pet ideas and inklings. I think real reporting to gather facts is essential to the events in progress and then for that person to speed the information into the hands of an Editor. It then becomes his business to combine it with other information he has received, to be presented in keeping with the views of the paper's owner or publisher.
In the current squabble on TV news, a viewer took a "reporter" to task for overstepping her place and entering into the investigative aspects of the case in covert competition with proper police and other authorities trained and assigned do so. The "reporter" has turned being a private detective, a bounty huntress, or an old-fashion pulp magazine mystery writer or a "Gossip column " from the 1930's. Such ego-switches are not uncommon and usually fade away as amateur gong-getters. They can be dangerous with a good chance, as the critical viewer suggests, that her mechanizations as a self-trained, self-appointed Sherlock might foul up the authentic investigation.
The smooth-talking "news" wizards found on television screens often stay strictly within what they speak of as "the Law" by pointing out they are, in to-be-molded minds of many, listed as "entertainers."
What a gross insult to the stars of our theatrical world!
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 9-15-06 [c-382wds]
