Amazing. A producer at ABC's "Good Morning America" named John Green apparently sent an email to colleagues during the Sept. 30, 2004 presidential debate, and declared, "Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke."
Drudge got some of Green's emails and posted them on March 23. Now ABC has suspended Green for this.
And a good thing, too. How dare this producer express such an opinion! I'm sure every single one of his colleagues had enough professionalism and self-discipline to ban all opinions from their brain-pans during that important political event. There wasn't anyone else at ABC watching that debate who might have been thinking, "Bush makes me sick," or, for that matter, "Kerry is such a boob!"
Only, it seems, John Green had the temerity, the gall, the poor form, not just to have an opinion but to share it in an email message. Really, the guy shouldn't just be suspended, he should be drummed out of the journalism profession without a hearing. Revoke his credentials (whatever they are)! Let's make sure all the editors, reporters, producers and correspondents out there never have opinions. Because then they might, you know, have something to say.
(Gee, I wonder whether anyone at Fox News was emailing any opinions on that debate night?)
There was another Green email in which he apparently expressed a dislike for former secretary of state Madeline Albright because of what he termed her "Jew shame." That's a pretty crude phrase. Beyond that, I suppose we're supposed to be upset that Green is admitting he doesn't like some of the people who appear on the show he produces. It would indeed be a better world if all producers liked every single one of the people they booked. Beyond that, so what? And since Bush and Albright belong to different parties, which side is Green supposed to be biased toward, anyway?
At some point we will need to give up and simply accept that journalists and editors are human beings, and human beings have points of view, and it's better to know those biases than to pretend they don't exist. There's no escape from this -- not even via the Google News route of news-judgment by algorithm. Somebody's got to write the algorithm and choose the data sources, and that person will have opinions, and those sources will have opinions.
|
|
