It feels like the news today is not about what’s happening but who’s reporting on it.
When Fox News decided not to show the January 6 prime time hearings on its news network, the cry from other media outlets could be heard around my newsfeed.
The last time I looked, Fox Business News, which carried the hearings with Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum as hosts, is a Fox news channel. It carries more relevant information than we often get from the “mainstream media.” I can say the same about CNBC. Those two channels are the only ones my man and I watch in the mornings.
The hue and cry about who covered what was all smoke and mirrors as far as I’m concerned.
I was primed to watch Season 6 of Peaky Blinders, so I had no intention of wasting my time with the hearings no matter who carried them. Sorry, but how can I take something as a serious threat to our Democracy when hearings on it don’t include Republicans selected by their party leadership — just two partisan appointees. What’s so democratic about that?
And I’m reasonably certain that the poor shop owners and residents of cities who saw their business and homes looted and burned in the 100 days of violence and destruction in 2020 would say that Democracy is being threatened by anarchists. But there haven’t been any hearings on that, have there?
I saw the Kavanaugh hearings and the so-called presidential impeachments, so I’m not interested in another circus. Thoughtful hearings, with no grandstanding, are always welcome but scarce these days. Likely because members of Congress think that the public is too stupid to make up their minds after hearing all the facts. The truth is that we all know what’s going on in Washington, and it’s not pretty or very democratic.
I was also amused this morning to see an article on the newsfeed about how a female reporter for The Washington Post was fired after complaining about the treatment of women in the paper’s newsroom. Her diatribe, which spilled onto social media, was started by a joke retweeted by one of her fellow journalists.
Do these people actually work as journalists digging out the news these days or is it all about them?
When I was a reporter, we spent plenty of time in the bars after work grouching about this or that editor or placement of a story or favored treatment for one reporter over another. But we kept our bitching in-house.
The female reporter for The Post was so busy building her brand she forgot the lesson learned from The Godfather – when Michael says to Fredo: “Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever.”
And what a whiner this woman is. When I started in the business there were four women in the newsroom. Only one had a respectable beat to cover, although another was a damn fine editor. It wasn’t until the daughter of the publisher joined our ranks that we were allowed to wear pants, cover the police beat and given other tough assignments.
That was decades ago and everything has changed, I guess. But serious, responsible journalism is still a fine craft and indispensable to a free society. It’s time for today’s media to recognize their responsibility and quit trying to make themselves the center of attention.
On a programming note: Sad to say that Peaky Blinders was not on until tonight. I must have mis-read the promos so ended up watching another episode of The Staircase, which is riveting TV — unlike other things we are expected to watch and believe.