Word: badness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Just about the most annoying question a journalist faces is, Why don't you print more good news? This question assumes that reporters get a kick out of reporting the bad, have some political motive for doing so or know that sensationalism sells papers. Journalism answers testily: Do you want to avert your eyes from reality and live in a dream world? We have to report the good and bad...
When stated this flatly, the press's side of the argument seems to be the better. The press has a harder time coping with critics who concede that of course the bad must be reported too, but is the right balance being struck? Does the news on the air or in print truly reflect reality...
...Viet Nam years, he angered the press by asking a persistent reporter, "Whose side are you on?" In a deposition he made in General Westmoreland's libel suit against CBS (it was not quoted directly in court), Rusk was asked whether the Johnson Administration deliberately minimized the war's bad news and emphasized the good. His answer...
...that's the way it is," as Walter Cronkite used to sign off his newscasts, implying you were getting it all, the good and the bad. But this can hardly be true when so much of the world is off limits to reporters and cameramen. From these areas the bad news filters out only gradually, and usually without pictorial evidence. The recent commemorations of two past wars prove the point. We relive the painful memories of American soldiers torching a village but see no comparable footage of the North Vietnamese committing atrocities. The result is a distorting imbalance. So much...
Mouthing off comes naturally. Every time there was a talent show or a musical in school, I was always in it. Cinderella and the Wizard of Oz and Godspell and My Fair Lady: the ingenue role was always mine. But when there was a role for, like, a forward, bad girl, everybody sort of unanimously looked over at me when they were casting...