Love Thy Neighbor

In today’s broadcast and print media, there is an air of unrest that has never before existed. The more well-known personalities reporting to us and our children are just plain rude and obnoxious. They place themselves on a pedestal and make judgments that are to be followed, or else we the listener are wrong.

Let ‘s examine a few of these top professionals violating our thought process. One of the worst offenders is Keith Olberman. Nightly, at 8 p.m., on MSNBC, Olberman rails against the right wing and Republicans by the score, this of itself would be okay. However, Mr. Olberman deems it necessary to resort to name calling when his opinions would suffice. Constantly referring to the conservative point of view represented on Fox as those “talking heads,” and attacks Bill O 'Reilly as “Billo the Clown.”
Olberman’s tagline is “Saving the Democracy.” Honestly, he is tearing it down, instead of praising the concept for giving him the opportunity to do so.

O 'Reilly, while being a seasoned, well-traveled journalist, is just as bad, conferring his own brand of “Fair and Unbiased” reporting by calling the people on the left “Pinheads.” Almost nightly, he will single out one of the liberals and pick them to pieces in the name of good journalism. O'Reilly will go as far as to invite comedian Dennis Miller on air to report. Miller, while being a good actor and an intelligent person, also resorts to name calling at every corner of his interview.

What happened to reporters who had the integrity and the fortitude to refer to each other as colleagues? You never heard David Brinkley or Walter Cronkite call each other let alone other people names. They were able to concentrate on the news itself. While it may be true the times have changed, the rules of good manners and etiquette have remained the same. Political commentators, such as Olberman and O’Reilly, are no more than glorified versions of Jerry Springer.

Is there anything in the news coverage today considered unbiased under the pressure of either politicians, or big business feeding the information directly to the mouths of the press? The dollar always rules over the common sense exhibited.

This is not to say there are no hard working, honest reporters in the field. It’s just those practicing this brand of “yellow” journalism only improve ratings and bring in more advertising revenues.

The problem we are witnessing today is the examples being taught to young people who watch and care about the news. College students in this country can only believe this is the way journalists should behave. I only hope, in our universities, broadcast and print journalism professors are teaching their students the important values of reporting an event, instead of introducing their personal political leanings to the story in hand.

There should be an effort made to lead us down the path of being good Americans and not people who want or need to call each other names. As Red Green (Steve Smith) says, “Hang in there we're all in this together.”

Can we all just get along?