Journalism is a joke anymore...

Are there any REAL journalists out there?

I'm not the only one who feels frustrated that there is little to no coverage of the real issues...

I'm sick to death of the Paris/Anna Nicole/Brittany sagas (like that is NEWS??) and the glossing over real issues (like what may have caused the Utah mine to collapse?).

There is no coverage of veteran associations' evaluations of Craig/Simpson/Crapo so Idahoans keep re-electing them (thinking they are supporting the troops by electing these Republicans... HA!).

It's not just a local issue... there have been questions about credible media coverage for years... from Colin Powell's son being appointed as the head of FCC ... Jeff Gannon's fake reporting ... Fox News altering Wikipedia ... Fox News and their misleading headlines ...

So what is going on?

One retired news reporter told me that:

“The media are in their usual hurry to put this GOP embarrassment to rest. This is the result of decades of abuse heaped on the media every time they print or broadcast a story that is not 100% complimentary to Republican candidates and office holders.

From the late 1970s, it was a predictable pattern. Find out something negative about a Republican, go with the story and you could expect a flurry of letters and phone calls accusing you of deep bias and outright incompetence. They often went to your bosses threatening that they could get you fired. You worried about it because you knew your station manager or executive editor belonged to the same golf club or the Arid club or whatever elite organization as the GOP leadership.

After awhile, reporters had to spend so much time justifying their work, they’d just back away from anything negative about the Rs. And, don’t forget: television news is in it for the ratings. If TV reporters believe the Rs are the huge majority, who do you think they’ll play to?

Democrats haven’t figured out how to push back. I’m not suggesting they push for suppression of the truth. But they’re certainly going to lose the perception wars if they don’t push for even-handed coverage. The message has to go to Idaho media that nobody is fooled by their acrobatics to please the Republican extremists.

Sali’s bigoted comments will go deep underground and stay forgotten come Election Day. In the meantime, several newspapers will do puff pieces, or as we used to put it crudely, ‘blow jobs’ on Sali describing a kinder, gentler and more palatable to the mainstream kind of guy. On Election Day, the very people who should be horrified by his comments will blithely cast their votes for him completely unaware of his deep seated bigotry.

And Idaho’s reputation as a backwater full of George-Wallace-style-knuckle-draggers will be intact.”

Are we willing to allow this to go on??