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Originally Posted by Toughy
I feel like quoting the They came is like using a sledge hammer to shell pecans.............
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Can we call that Toughy's Law which is a corollary of Godwin's Law?
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Wesboro Church is made up of about 30 or so folks with most of them being close bio family. They have been around at least 20 years spewing their vitriol at funerals and other events. They are not newsworthy. The membership is stable over those years. They are not a growing grass roots or corporate movement.
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These are the groups that I would like to see the media take a long, hard look at.
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I think we have forgotten what 'news' means. There was a time when the News Department of TV and radio stations was a stand alone department that did not have to make a profit or have high ratings. The news was too important in a democracy.
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I also think that journalists have forgotten what their jobs are, as well. Over the next few days we're going to be put through the usual spectacle cycle. Several people will make comments on national TV about the violent rhetoric in modern political discourse. There will be denials that statements about 'second amendment remedies' or maps with the names of members of Congress iin the crosshairs have any corrosive or poisonous effect on our discourse. Equivalencies will be made to the left-wing radicals of the 60's (and here a valid point will be hard to argue against) but there will be a suggestion that since the left-wing radicals got away with it (which they didn't, by the way) now it's the turn of the right-wing radicals. The news media will paint almost precisely this picture of things because, well, false equivalency has become the new American pastime.
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Today the News Department is in the Entertainment Department. The news must turn a profit and have high ratings. I doubt Walter Cronkite would be a news anchor today. What is reported is driven by that need for profit and ratings.
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Absolutely! I doubt that Cronkite, Murrow, or Daniel Shchorr would be able to work today. Perhaps it's time for the media to recall that it is unofficially the Fourth Estate and is the *only* industry granted explicit Constitutional protections.
Cheers
Aj