DUer niyad asked me to make this an OP. Why my background makes me despise trump.

[calimary]

I wrote this on May 19th and it pretty well explains what personally grinds my teeth about donald. And why I HATE his slamming the media as "fake news." I hate it with the proverbial burning fire of a thousand suns. Can't help it. I take that personally. That's where I used to work. And I worked in, and on, the media starting while I was still in college, and for the next at least 25 years. Indeed, I was one of the first women to break into broadcasting in this country, and indeed the first newswoman at several of the L.A. stations where I worked. And I worked with a LOT of people who had long before earned respect and admiration and imitation, along with truckloads of awards. I guess it all started with the high school newspaper... But I WILL NOT STAND FOR trump insulting and disrespecting badmouthing and besmirching and even literally endangering the lives and the personal safety of newspeople - since he started running for president. How FUCKING DARE YOU, donald. So here's my rant, which started with a complaint about those who still feel compelled to pussyfoot through this Acid Reign:


Sorry. As a retired journalist, I don't have much patience or forgiveness for squandering a few years trying to tiptoe around truth in order to avoid the wrath of the liar.

Sorry. NO EXCUSES FOR THAT, and YES, I'm SHOUTING!

DAMMIT! That's MY former profession to which he's laying waste. That he's almost literally (if not verbally) shitting upon. That's work I did and people I worked with and with whom I shared the workload. People with whom I stood out in the cold and near danger when we were covering high-rise fires, airplane crashes, and campaigns and Election nights, and glamour gaggles like the Oscars and Hollywood Boulevard Star Ceremonies. I stood behind rope lines with those people. I worked til 3am and 4am alongside them in newsrooms. I fought my way through obstacles alongside them. I covered death and grieving alongside them. I covered celebrations and glitz alongside them. I was elbow-to-elbow with them in small cramped spaces set aside for press, ropes behind which we were confined, police lines we had to have certified credentials to cross, and I even had a chance to throw an uncomfortable question to a slick-talking president in a room full of them.

I can say it now because I'm retired and no longer in a position where my opinion doesn't belong (covering actual news. Just the facts, ma'am. NOT doing commentary or generating editorials or other opinion-related material as I'm now free to do in places like this). I LOVED those people. It didn't really matter if we were "competitors." We ALL worked together. Somebody's mic fell off the podium? Whoever was closest scrambled up to set it back in place. Somebody's battery ran out on their tape recorder so they couldn't record the rest of the press conference? One of us invariably had extras to offer. OR, on occasion, some of us even had an extra tape recorder to lend out. One of us didn't get to the newser on time and missed the first half? One or more of the rest of us was happy to make them a dub or feed them the material back in the newsroom so they'd have it, too. Somehow, even in crowded rooms, there was always at least a little place for a late-comer, or a shorter person, to fit in so they could cover the story and see what they were doing, also.

It was just that way. After all, we were all sharing each other's soundbites, weren't we? There was a collegiality to the news community when I was working. We WERE all in this together, and all on the same side, even while being competitors. There were exceptions, of course. An exclusive interview, for example. Well, you got it? You use it, but after you've just run it, you share it. And let everybody else pick it up. They'll give you credit, as anyone can see when CNN runs something from ABC World News Tonight or CSPAN, or MSNBC runs something from Pox Noise or CBS's "Face the Nation." And so on. Attribution. There's a professional courtesy governing all.

I have heard of the cut-throat tactics, where somebody would actually pull out another reporter's mic cable and plug theirs in, instead. Mic cables have even been cut! When I was working, NO ONE did that. NO ONE did that! And if there wasn't enough room on the mult box to plug your mic in, somebody else patched you into their tape machine so you were in effect getting it through them. I saw situations like that frequently. Frankly, whenever the situation demanded it. And I saw a lot of those, especially A) working in a media market the size of Los Angeles, and B) covering the activities and business of the "company town" - being an entertainment reporter in L.A.

Sheesh ... it takes me back. Those were some pretty doggone cool times, especially when viewed from a distance (in time). AT the time, I didn't think about it much, because I was always too busy working! Trying to get the story, get it right, and get it on the air. I feel almost ridiculously lucky to have been able to be part of it.

DAMN YOU, trump! You've disrespected and slammed and smeared people I cared deeply about, and worked closely with, and studied, and tried to emulate and to learn from. And envied! Some of these people I was so intimidated by the very idea that I'd be working with them - or doing "that" - that I could barely even speak to them, and when I would merely have told them how thrilling it was for me to be working with them. Some of them were big names. But most of them were more of just working stiffs. A whole bunch of mild-mannered Clark Kents (especially at the AP). People who worked like dogs. And tracked like bloodhounds. People who were out, in all kinds of weather, and in dangerous places with an out-of-control brushfire in the background or even wading out into a swollen river after hellacious rainstorms, and late on a dark night in dicey places downtown. People who put in long, longer, and longest hours, often unpaid overtime. Maybe there was a crowd and lots of TV camera illumination at the site of the breaking story, but if you drove in, you had to find a place to park, and it was usually far enough away from the command post that you had to walk. Or you had to arrange rides, or you were with a crew in a remote unit. Especially late at night in odd parts of town.

DAMN YOU, trump! You sully the profession I loved and for whom some actually give their lives. I don't know a single soul among them in any capacity who was a "lazy moocher," much less a fake. And back then, I worked with everybody from every network, affiliate, and independent entity, TV, radio, print, cable, syndication, and the then-fledgling online outlets. You sully the only profession that's included, by name, in the Constitution of the United States. See the FIRST Amendment. Always lots of whoop-de-doo all the time about the Second Amendment. Sorry. We-the-news-media beat that. We're in the FIRST Amendment. Obviously whoever wrote all that up had THAT on his mind, not guns.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment

And speaking of guns, I was working at NBC when the crew came back from Jonestown Guyana. What was left of them, anyway. Producer Bob Flick and sound guy Steve Sung were based in Burbank, where I was based, on NBC Radio. They were down there covering the Jim Jones/People's Temple story, when it turned deadly. Correspondent Don Harris, who'd been a local anchor before he went to network, was among those killed, along with cameraman Bob Brown (who had been romantically involved with the local TV female anchor - she was bereft for weeks, both off the air AND on). And I remember how Steve Sung would later show his wounds, talking about the "piece of meat" that was literally shot loose from his forearm, that he grabbed and pulled all the way off - it was in the way and he was still trying to cover the story WHILE taking cover as bullets were flying. He and Bob Flick both survived. Congressman Leo Ryan from Northern California was among those killed in the attack. Dedicated journalists like Flick and Sung and Brown and Harris - donald, you will NOT smear them OR their latter day colleagues working now, OR the business where we all hung our proverbial news hats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

Sorry this is so long. DAMN donald. He hollers "Fake News". HE'S the Fake. Make that FUCKING Fake.


Thanks for suffering this with me.