(12-14-2017, 01:24 PM)BIAD Wrote: Christmas Is For Giving And Forgiving.
As December edges ever-nearer to Christmas and the deliberation of family or solitude are at the forefront of our
minds, please give a thought to the conniving Journalist.
With the wish to take part in the festivities and to be close to home, the passion that Journalists have for bringing
up-to-date news to the public can wane because of the simple logistics of it all.
A political incident occurs that would be sieved to atoms in February may not carry the same value in late-December
when a Journalist's thoughts are on mulled-wine and being with those they love. The recent distortion of the truth on
the MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' television show where the participants recorded a programme before Thanksgiving and
then aired it with comments to imply it was live, offers the two sides of what Journalism has become.
A job and a con-job.
For this particular programme, the hosts couldn't bring themselves to admit that when it came to news-relaying and
commentary, their private lives outweighed their daily employment and by doing so, revealed that falshoods meant
nothing to them.
It can be argued that there's nothing in the social contract that states Journalists, pundits and political commentators
must work during the Christmas period, but there can be erroneous implications that they do and that's just wrong.
So what other ways does one get around this conundrum of looking news-pious and at the same time, doing a
'Ferris Bueller'?!
The answer is generic articles and silly-season stories.
Some here may think I have a problem with this particular profession and they'd be wrong, I admire any action that
demands commitment. But I have worked in that business and have been indirectly complicit in how a Reporter or
Journalist is deemed more important than the many others who're involved in bringing a newspaper to life.
This isn't sour grapes, I did the hours and took the pay. I retired at 53 years-old and I'm happy as a clam!
I've seen guys worked 20 hours-straight to get a morning paper out during a technology change-over and in
celebration of the acheivement, the Editor decides to do a write-up for the next day.
The next day when we start all over again with no idea whether these new-fangled computers will do what they're
supposed to do!
For my own part, I worked a full week with two hours of sleep-a-day, juggling my own physical tasks with assisting
to make a newspaper real. I and a co-worker were only stopped when it was realised that we were beginning to
hallucinate!
By the way, movies and television shows often offer a journalist-character uttering the phrase, 'Putting the paper to
bed' but in reality, it hasn't even been printed yet!
The men on the printing-press, the despatching department -where newspapers are packed and prepared for correct
delivery, the drivers -who get the papers to shops and stores in all weathers and even the kids on their bicycles, jamming
the paper through a letterbox. All part of the system to get one single edition out for one day.
Granted, the Journalists took a more-creative part in the early tasks, but when it came to bringing a photographer down
from the Editorial Department for a 'heroic'-style story, the group of workers I've just listed above were asked to leave
and three Journalists appeared, positioned in front of a pile of stacked newspapers and smiled for the camera.
But I digress.
The 'trick'... the illusion that when a newspaper or news-television programme is offered to the public, a perception
is also given of noble commitment and ethical translation. The use of words and images are consciously arranged
to not give the impression that the information is 'out of date' or merely a preferred slant on an article is being used.
Let's say, an elderly lady knits thirty hats in the summer for the homeless and a friend relates this to a local newspaper.
Homeless people are deemed an emotive issue and can provoke more feelings at Christmas than July, so that
story can be used in December rather than when first reported on.
Is it relevant when the hats were knitted...? Will the story have a better impact at Christmas to a reader who doesn't
know the whole story and simply absorbs a perception loosely based on the social-acceptance of kindness at this
time of the year?
I've seen a Christmas Quiz that many readers enjoy, fully created right up to the pages being printing-plates waiting
beside a press in October and oddly enough, all of the questions are not contemporary of the printing time!
Coincidence?
Once, a 'Bingo'-like competition became a problem when scores of readers rushed into the offices to proclaim they
had the winning result. Only to be told it was a typing error because -unknown to them, the one number that was needed
wasn't to be issued for another two weeks!
The Loch Ness Monster, Ufos and Bigfoot always seem to to emerge in the summer and around the Yuletide period.
Is it the change in the weather...? Why is it that these strange anomalies get reported within a similar time-frame every
year?
Summer vacations and Christmas holidays for Journalists!
It could be that someone in November saw Gordi's aquatic beastie splashing about in the Great Glen and told a local
hack of the incident and it could be that with more cloud cover in the late-autumn months, a fleet of shiny saucers came
to Earth with thoughts of flashing their lights at late-travellers and invasive probing.
Or it could be just another round of column-fillers... non-time-sensitive stories used during staff shortages.
I've worked the shift on Christmas Eve, the first night of a ten-year period from working during the day, found me being
approahed by two Sub-Editors relating a secret to me. The many other staff that were employed in the hours of daylight
were under the impression that the reason Journalists were paid extra at Christmas was because they worked through
into the early hours of Christmas Day morning. But here was I... one of them, now one of those!
Let's just say by 10.30.pm, I was sat in a Pub enjoying a few pints with the Reporters and by midnight, I was sound
-asleep at home. The newspaper -now printed far away from it's origins, full of non -specific articles massaged into
thought-provoking rhetoric and free of the burden of relating when the accounts occurred.
The sad part -in my view, is that this inattentive manner of taking a report and changing it into a personal narrative,
has become more prevalent these days. Something that happened last week or yesterday can be rehashed again
and driven from a different perspective and this current frenzy of he-said-she-said, is called 'news'.
Many here on Rogue Nation will already be fully aware of the comments here and how information is transported
from an incident to a transparent nobody reading from a video screen, but It needs telling and I'd suggest keeping
this in-mind the next time a News Presenter confides in the viewers how virtuous he/she and the rest of the team
are.
I think individual perception is important to mention as well, because everyone's perception is very different.
You always hear cops say that you can have multiple eye witnesses to any story and get multiple tales of what actually happened, with many differences in those tales. Eye witnesses are notoriously bad witnesses.
When it come to "opinion" facts dont matter, perception and feelings do, which is even worse. I don't want my news based on the perception and feelings of strangers, I want fact and only facts. I can develop my own perception and feelings based on those facts without anyone's help.