Yikes! ping
Your typical news dept. employee fits this profile like you wouldn't believe. Non-news dept. folk are a lot more...well, sane.
I know a reporter at one of the nation’s largest newspapers and the same thing applies there, as well. The few conservatives who enter journalism are working in an atmosphere more hostile than most of us can imagine.
MM
But it's so satisfying to accomplish. :)
i worked in tv for 15 years and this is the same advice i have been giving
to people and tried to give to republicans via newt gingrich. i could
not get him to believe me. that’s what is so depressing about someone like katie couric. she got her start through adultery with newsroom boss.
she knows nothing. far less than sarah palin. they must publicly be confronted with the truth and embarrassed by name. bush sr. stumbled into that
with dan rather and scored many points.
Anchors were openly cheering when the news came out that Sarah Palin's daughter was pregnant. Some of the comments were so over-the-top childish and nasty that I couldn't believe what I was hearing. They're obsessed with her. They hate her even more than they hated Bush. And they all talk openly about how "stupid" and "unqualified" she is. It's pretty much a hostile work environment for the few conservatives who work here.
It isn't "pretty much a hostile work environment", it IS.
File charges on them with the Human Resources department and possibly seek a legal charge.
When they call Gov. Palin "Big Oil With T!ts", a "crazy b!tch" (as Betty White did on air), report how Sandra Bernhard said she'd be gang raped by black men in New York, call her a c##t, etc. and LAUGH at the reports of such activity off camera it IS a hostile environment. When they call her a hypochristian for having a pregnant teenaged daughter, that is religious discrimination.
Go after them. Turn the tables.
Think globally, act locally. Cut the guy wires on their transmitter towers!
Now, I'm thinking the priorities of that adage are wrong.
I saw this attitude during base closure hearings several years ago. Anchors from two local stations sat in the press box and were constantly preening. The female anchor for the other station, she was locale and had friends at the base, sat among the observers and was taking notes.
This might interest you!
if you think all newsrooms are like this you are an idiot. It is true most people have to move from city to city to move up in the business. How many of you would want to sit in hodunk Iowa (or name another random state, I have nothing against Iowa personally) Newsrooms are filled with recent college grads who read everything given to them. In my experience there are just as many republicans as democrats in LOCAL newsrooms. I know many of you won’t believe that fact, but it is true. Calling and yelling as a producer or manager won’t make them change their newscasts. Especially in smaller cities they don’t have the time or manpower to care about people calling for ACORN coverage, just like they don’t have the time to care about the other side yelling about whatever. If you want coverage get people together, hold rallies, send press releases made well ahead of time, get local officials together. My friends who work in newsrooms hate nothing more than people who call and demand attention and then yell about not getting what they want. In smaller cities you’ll get a cock 20 something who thinks he or she knows best. In bigger cities you get someone in their 30’s or 40’s who actually do know news better than you. The point is just calling to complain doesn’t get anything done, think before yelling.
I’m a longtime reporter for a major newspaper. {By the way, it happened by fluke, not by pursuing the “profession.”} During the ‘92 election, when, because of our computer system, everybody had access to what everybody else was doing, stories about the elder Bush were “slugged” by words such as “trash,” “scum,” “liar.” Stories are identified inside a newspaper by what they are “slugged.” Now, it’s 16 years later, and the bias and arrogance is much worse. When I went into the office yesterday, the first three conversations I heard were all ripping on Sarah Palin. This, in a workplace where people are losing jobs daily because of multiple reasons including, obviously, the blatant bias combined with an even more disgusting elitism.
When you get an answer about voter suppression, ask them to explain exactly what that is, could they clarify how voting is suppressed, and what evidence exists for suppression in any election since 19_ _.
I think that claim is bogus.
I’d like to know the numbers of personnel handling voter registration cards, how many precincts there are per county, how many ‘urban’ seniors are dismissed to ‘help’ with voting, etc., etc.
It's my opinion that the majority of people get most of their news from the short news blurbs on the radio at the top and bottom of the hour. If you have more of an insight into the stories that are referenced, the reports are often biased or wrong! For example the other day I heard something like this: "Barak Obama, campaigning in Detroit today said, 'Obama quote'. Mean while, Senator McCain and Governor Palin held a rally in (some location)" I hear this and I think, where is the equal time? The AP or Cbs news or whom ever have pretty much given Obama a free commercial spot! grrrrrrr!
I work in public relations, meaning I work with reporters just about every day of my life. Many are very friendly and are easy to develop good relationships with. Many more are profoundly unfriendly and clearly have a superiority complex. I take some of this as reflecting a general dislike and/or distrust of PR people, and some of it as reporters thinking that they are among society’s upper crust and friendliness is beneath them.
Mercifully, I don’t work in politics, but even the business/consumer reporters I work with regularly are clearly liberal. I have no choice but to chuckle at their anti-Republican remarks and tactfully change the subject if my clients want coverage. But I suspect that the average American hasn’t really got a clue about how pervasive the liberal bias is.
I wanted to be a journalist, but then I met some of the students who were majoring in the field at my local university. The superficiality and lack of intelligence were profound. I was completely put off of it when a survey revealed that about 90% of journalism students were pursuing the field because they wanted to change the world. I don’t recall if any of them wanted to report what actually happened. Probably not.
One of my friends in the school became a volunteer firefighter and inspired me to become a volunteer E.M.T. We were working together at the school when one of the journalism students asked us to videotape a story to help the homeless. This was in 1985.
“How are you going to help the homeless?”
“We are going to have a protest.”
“How is that going to help the homeless?”
“We are raising awareness.”
My friend rolled his eyes at the notion of ‘look at me’ activism, but I had a question. There was a homeless mission nearby; I knew this because once in a while my mother gave them food from her church and I would deliver it.
So I said, “Well, there’s a soup kitchen right down the road from here in Paterson. If you want to help the homeless, they’d love for you to show up in the morning and help feed them.” The journalism student lurched backwards, put up his open palms as if to prevent such an offensive thought from actually touching him, and blurted out, “Oh, I would never do that.”
Of course not. The homeless people at the soup kitchen were all black. Racism is a funny thing. If you can not hold onto a man while he is suffering or dying because he is black or Jewish or something, you will weed yourself out of the 911 system very quickly. Some people accuse everyone else of prejudice, the rest of us can’t understand what they mean. My friend told the journalism student that we didn’t have time to do his story and he went away.
I tried to get back into journalism locally last year. I might have even posted about it here. Something about it again put me off. A director I dealt with seemed to meausure the depth of a man by how much he could boast. I think that sums up the profession.