Dan Rather, Michael Moore, Christiana Amanpour

[Doc]

Hi,

. . . Sean Connery played a "superstar" reporter . . .

Text reporters are seen as nothing more than a byline.  Perhaps by doing something extremely outstanding ("Doctor Livingston I presume") they can occasionally be noticed.  But in text reporting it is all about the news and nothing about the chronicler.

The radio changed that some, so that a little of the personality of the reporter came through.  While still mostly about the news, the 'news people' started to become more important -- especially those that served up the news with a fair bit of opinion.

And now, the botoxed beauties and coiffure clotheshorse through which any importance or relevance is filtered out of the news have become *the* show.  An extremely happy group due to their ignorance, they can seldom pronounce, and rarely understand, anything more complex than a train wreck (and in some cases not even that).  And, although their putative job is to elevate the nations collective intelligence and knowledge, they
"Care ... not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That {they're} in."

Possibly the biggest mistake of our times, when so many big mistakes have been made, was in not interpreting the first amendment literally.  It mentions 'the press', as in the printing press, the written word.  It says nothing of radio and TV ;)  Time to shut down those detractors to the nation's mental health and sanity :)

--Pete

Pete, if you don't mind me saying, that pretty much sums up how I feel.

I like text. And radio. Not a fan of TV.

As for the botoxed beauties and the well groomed (ugh) metrosexual talking heads on tv, I feel like, at times, I am watching a Gap commercial and not the news.

Text is still with out a doubt, the best medium. For news, books, any source of information. It does not need to be booted, does not need electricity, does not need Windows, Linux, or Mac compatability, only a basic understanding of the language it is written in. There is something comforting in the flow of a well written piece. Something about the rustle of paper, mayhap the smell of ink. News on TV is to, well, unsettling. Bright flashy graphic fade ins and outs, loud nerve wracking theme music and dramatic introduction pieces, and some of those people talking talk like they are talking through their nose. Bloody annoying. And there is the little news ticker at the bottom, background information, occasional sidebars, topbars, and live film footage as well as a talking head on screen all at once.

Yuck.