Saturday, August 25, 2012

When A Word Is Not Just A Word

Full day ahead. Much is planned...more is anticipated.

It would have been nice to get a little more sleep, but not to be...woke up at four. It might have been possible to fall back to sleep if I had not heard something on TV which annoyed the shit out of me. Once those remaining brain cells start buzzing... might as well take a shower and sit down to write

Flipping through the channels, I came across an encore (the new phrase we use now for a rerun) presentation of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. Sitting in for O'Reilly was Monica Crowley. She was interviewing Geraldo Rivera about the Lance Armstrong doping story.

I did not see most of the segment, but the thing that set me off was Crowley saying this scandal was a tragedy...twice. Now, I'm assuming she took some Journalism classes, English classes and has access to dictionary.com. If true, Armstrong's misconduct is a disgrace, reprehensible and stupid. It is not a tragedy.

To place an athlete's alleged transgression into the same class as the shooting in Aurora, or the Japanese Tsunami is improper, unsuitable and minimizes events which are truly tragedies.

Whether or not Armstrong is guilty is meaningless in this discussion. For what he went through battling cancer, I sincerely hope he had more brains than to shoot his body up with more potentially life altering chemicals. My problem is with the misuse of the English language. That should elicit a few laughs from those who know me and are aware of my constant affront on correct grammar. However, I'm not on television and I'm not representing a network.

More and more, television news programs are becoming reality shows. Talking heads now replace journalists. Fair and unbiased reporting has been replaced with anchors who make no effort to cover their political inclinations. Nouns and adjectives are thrown into discussions just to make an impact, without regard as to whether they are accurately used.

William R. Murrow would never recognize what now passes for journalism.
So very sad.

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2 comments:

  1. I totally agree with both points. Lance Armstrong getting stripped of a bicycle championship is a tragedy?

    You are SO right about talking heads replacing real news journalists. What ever happened to the "good ol days" when you were just informed about the events of the day without bias?

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  2. neither would uncle Walter Cronkite.good going kat

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