I’m still shrugging off my frustration over the site being knocked offline over the weekend, and maybe I just have a case of the Monday blues as well. A resignation, an adulterer who got murdered, and a serial killer dominated the news cycle today, while the Muslims rioted in northwestern China and set a bunch of cars on fire again. How does one sustain their zeal for covering the news in the midst of all this?
There’s nothing but speculation and rumor swirling around the governor of Alaska at this point. I suppose that’s the way she wanted it - pride cometh before a fall. The McNair story is despicable, and yet another illustration of the indelible fact that the wages of sin is death. The serial killer destroyed a swath of innocent lives across the southeast U.S., like the indecipherable villain in a Cormac McCarthy novel - there will be no answers to the questions at the end of that story, other than the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. The Mahometans in China picked another fight, because they worship a false god, and therefore their only theological argument is to kill people and set things on fire.
In the midst of all these stories, no one is reporting truth. It was a busy news day, and yet because the ethical standard for broadcast journalism is a feigned neutrality, there can be no resolution in the minds of the viewers. For the individual reporters who are assigned these stories to cover, they’re stuck in a little bubble. They’re on one story for the day, and they don’t get a chance to absorb anything with any sort of context (not that they’d understand it if they did). Yet for the decision-makers above them, the news directors who are calling the shots and setting the direction for the news of the day - I wonder… Do they look at themselves in the mirror at the end of the day and say to themselves, “I’m a liar, and the truth is not in me”? Do they wake up in a cold sweat and realize the damage they’re doing?
All of this gets back to my broader point - how you maintain or sustain your zeal for reporting the news? For myself, it’s through prayer and study of the Word, and realizing that greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. But the weight is heavy some nights (tonight, for example). Question for the other reporters out there. What sustains you? What makes you get out of bed every day, knowing that your higher-ups would never allow you to report the truth? Comments are welcome below, and encouraged.
Technorati Tags: Broadcast Journalism, China riots, McNair murder, News Reporting, Sarah Palin, Serial Killer, Truth
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Tags: Broadcast Journalism, China riots, McNair murder, News Reporting, Sarah Palin, Serial Killer, Truth
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on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Broadcast Journalism.
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