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Jan. 22, 2010 1. IF YOU ARE A REPORTER, REPORT ---DON’T INTERPRET! Give the facts about a speech, a rally, an event, a candidate’s position, not your opinion or interpretation. If I can tell by watching your TV report which candidate you personally support, then you are not doing your job correctly. You should be telling me the same type of information about all candidates running for a particular office. When you interview candidates, make it apples to apples, not apples to oranges. This last presidential election was a sham as far as reporting from most of the major news media. It was obvious that the reporting overwhelmingly favored Obama. Since when is it taught in journalism classes that it is okay to present positive views of one candidate and negative views of the other candidate? If a reporter interviewed Obama, then corresponding time should have been spent interviewing McCain about the same basic issues. Time spent interviewing Palin should have been balanced by time interviewing Biden on the same questions. Instead Obama coverage was overwhelmingly balanced against coverage of Palin even though they were not running for the same office! And unless you’re going to give equal time showing negative comic clips of both candidates, then don’t show any. Leave that to the talk-show comics and hosts. If the source of any viewer’s info on the past presidential campaign was the evening news, then that viewer received a very biased positive view of Obama and a very negative view of Palin, accentuated by repeated exposure to Tina Fey’s caricatures of her. When an interview of Obama was about whether he and his wife were going to get a dog as opposed to grilling Palin about what magazines she read to get news info, something is wrong with the interviewing process. As a viewer, neither question was pertinent. Sarah Palin was governing the State of Alaska. . . obviously she was literate, obviously she was garnering the info she needed to know in order to run the state. Meanwhile, the media only mentioned in passing any negative info about Obama (past associations, etc.) And again, time should have been balanced between Obama/McCain and Biden/Palin. 2. PLEASE DON’T TELL ME WHAT I JUST HEARD. . . I watch a debate and then instead of being allowed to process what I’ve heard and draw my own conclusions, I am immediately told by news media what it all meant, what was really said according to their interpretations. If you really want to provide a valuable service to your viewers, spend a day or two analyzing the comments of all debate participants and then present a segment that shows the viewers the truth or falseness of statements made by candidates and the relevant documentation that proves it.
Many years ago, reporters culled their own stories from the myriads of information that came over UPI and AP machines. I presume that in this day and age major news media reporters may just be given the stories they are to report via computer monitors, and they may not have the opportunity to make any decisions as to what actually gets reported on air. However, if you have chosen to be a journalist and you are asked to report from an unbalanced, biased point of view then I think you still have the responsibility, the moral responsibility, to voice your objections and to take a stand which promotes ethical reporting. When I watch the evening news, I expect to see total news coverage, not just the news that agrees with a reporter’s (or a network’s) political bias. If a network is not willing to provide an unbiased balanced news service for their viewers, then the network should change the name of the show to indicate that they are presenting their opinions, their take on what they consider relevant information or only the information that agrees with their views on a given subject. At this point, I can totally relate to the reporter I read about who, in reference to the recent campaign coverage, said he was embarrassed to tell people what he did for a living!
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