shakran

Well let's see. So far this year, I've twice had the local democratic campaign HQ's stage bullshit "political rallys" (read: they sent my station an invite, and no one else, and then wanted me to only shoot certain camera angles so it'd look like there was a crowd of anti-bush protestors there). You know I lean toward Kerry so you might expect that I'd play along, but I didn't. I went straight for the shot that showed the speaker talking to an empty room. Why? Because it was political shenannigans and I don't care who the hell you are, you're not getting away with it on my watch.

I've also been a proponent of fact checks on all candidates. If Bush says something that's untrue, we call him on it. Same with Kerry.


As for the swiftboat thing, it's pretty much discredited. We're not paying any attention to that idiot because 1) he didn't serve with Kerry (saying "I was on a swiftboat too!" and claiming that means you know everything Kerry did on HIS swiftboat is like saying "I know how Germans live because I ate sauerkraut once.")

The guy's been after Kerry for decades. His facts aren't there.

If we put him on the air, we're giving him free advertising.

If we attack him on the air, we've just wasted airtime because:
1) everyone who pays attention already knows he's full of it, so we don't need to tell you that and
2) those who still don't know he's full of it, aren't gonna be convinced by a 40 second story on it.




If anything I've seen that the good journalists are harder on "their side" than on the other - it's easy to call Bush on the carpet if you don't like him. You have to work harder to find stuff to criticize Kerry for if you're rooting for him, but that's exactly what we must and should do.



And please understand I'm not defending all journalism outlets here. Are there bad journalism shops? Hell yes. There's bad in every profession, and there's nothing anyone can do to screen out ALL the bad eggs before they can do damage. I don't think journalism as a profession should be blamed for this, however. I mean, you don't automatically assume that all soldiers are bad because a few of them abused Iraqi prisoners do you?



I don't even have a problem with shops being liberal or conservative. Do it if you wanna, but be honest about it. Fox should not be calling themselves "fair and balanced" when their viewpoint is skewed so far to the right. This, more than the simple fact that they're obviously biased to the right, is why they're so sharply criticized.