Friday, April 2, 2010

The news week in summary

Mommy reprimanded me for not updated my blogs, so here I am. It’s been a busy week.

Let’s see… Monday. Hmmm. I don’t remember Monday. I had a migraine and the whole day is sort of a blur. I’m sure we covered a news story, I just don’t remember what. Sad, huh?



Tuesday. Ah… the Alcala sentencing. This is the case I blogged about a while back. He was given the death sentence for the third time, but because all death sentences can be appealed, I’m sure he’ll appeal just as he did the last two times. The sadist will probably out live us all. More details came out in this case regarding how the women died. The man truly is the devil.



Wednesday. Here’s a provocative one. Gay Jesus. Told you it was provocative. There’s a play written by Terrance McNally called CORPUS CHRISTI. It’s the retelling of the Jesus story, with Jesus as a gay man living in 1950s Corpus Christi, and is obviously, very controversial—especially this particular performance taking place Easter Sunday at a progressive Christian church. I won’t pass judgment one way or another on the topic. But I do want to talk about judgment of a different kind. Right before our live shot outside the church, a man came up and said to be sure to point out that the church isn’t a Christian church. Oh, but it is. They consider themselves Christian. We can’t contradict that in our story and say they’re not. When my reporter explained this to him, he got angry because it’s not HIS idea of Christianity.

Immediately after our live shot, I noticed a woman standing near our truck scowling. The second we wrapped, she stomped up to us and said, “I can’t believe you’re exploiting this.” Then she went on to criticize our story for being one-sided. Our story was most certainly NOT one-sided. We talked to people on both sides of the issue. When we asked her what she thought of the sound bytes from the Faith Coalition and from the two college students opposed to it, she admitted she didn’t watch our whole story, that the moment she saw what our story was about, she rushed out of the house to our location to give her opinion. So she passed judgment without even knowing the facts. She walked away saying she had no respect for us as individuals.

It’s one of the weird things about working in this field. As an office worker, it’s doubtful you’ll have people walk into your workspace and personally attack you—something I get on a pretty regular basis. Another example: If we cover a Republican event (like the McCain/Palin event I just cover), they blast the liberal media and we get booed. Covering Democratic events, they refer to us as right wing conspirators and we get booed. We can’t be both, people! We try our best to be neutral, and for that neutrality, get blasted. Granted, there are definitely journalists with a slant. But that’s not the spirit of our profession.

THURSDAY: An arrest on a kidnapping plot.
FRIDAY: The economic effect on large churches and their Easter celebrations

Okay. I’ve rambled enough. Clearly, you can see what story got to me this week. As journalists, are we supposed to steer clear of controversial issues? Or explore them? If we lean to one side or the other, we’d be biased, right?

I’ll shut up now.

Later gators!

3 comments:

  1. What a great re-cap. I don't envy parts of your job. It would be interesting to learn what's going on in the world.

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  2. Thanks so much for posting your week! It's a tough job for sure, you're always going to have someone be angry about something...

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  3. I can't answer your questions. All I know is I could never be a journalist. I've been in many other situations where I've been publicly blasted and I really just don't like it. (lol Who does?) Thanks for the update. I missed your posts too, not just mama. x

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