Wednesday, February 15, 2017

S O U R C E S


Advice from a worn-out news-wire service reporter:
 
Just stop reading or listening and use the remote to find Nickelodeon when you see or hear the phrase "sources say" !
 
In what my sons call  "the olden days", we called  that  Bull-Spitting...Bogus...AND unprofessional.
 
Nowadays  this the way 80% of the stories on ESPN and about 40% of the stories in "prestigious" information conduits  begin or end.
 
If  these ink-stained wretches and Kleig-blinded morons of  Vidi-universe end up in court, they always have the crutch of  "privileged info" to fall back on in the matter of cornered  rodentia everywhere.
 
Nowadays, in the muck strangled stables of the fourth estate, which no Hercules could clean, the appellation "FAKE NEWS" is repeatedly hurled at these once trustworthy purveyors and arbiters of accurate information.
 
Whether the pros have been supplanted by rogues or traduced and brainwashed by America haters and race baiting billionaires like George Soros, we will probably never know for sure.
 
But in a time when all children (up to 20) are "kids"; where all law enforcement officers are "cops"; where males are "guys" and black gangs are "teens" and where arsonist rioters are  "protesters"--- where  supposed  news content and headlines may contain "snuck" and  "alleged fatality"  and  "hot pursuit" and "unclear shooter"... Simple  Ned's-first-reader articulation is sorely needed, but in  fatally short supply.
 
And with all this,  the torturous reach for superiority,hatefulness and derision are sometimes more easily recognized by the expression on the face of the TV  talking head than by the words that pour unintelligibly and inanely from their pie-holes.
 
We plead guilty to having labored in an earlier generation, and to being a purveyor of reverse ageism. But my mentors, few of whom ever saw the inside of a journalism school all were more thoughtful well spoken articulate and literate  than almost anyone I can read today. My television hosts and tutors were sticklers for understandable  and measured vocatives.
 
On a newspaper one of the rules  was "rape is a vegetable... assault is a crime". The word "cop" was verboten.  Respect was foremost... Even on the  crime beat.
 
Speculation and opinion appeared on two pages of the newspaper and nowhere on local television.
 
And no one, not even the opinion columnists, editorialists  and  syndicated savants ever built an essay on a foundation of unidentified dubious "sources".

Healthy skepticism is definitely  the weapon of these days. Maybe even total distrust beckons.