So much for the warm and fuzzy, now let me hop up on the soapbox!

I just finished watching a segment on what is happening in Egypt.  In this segment the petite little female reporter was complaining about how those rioters actually punched her photographer!  Hello!  Here we have people who are fighting for a cause that means their very life and this guy has the nerve to stick a camera in their face!  I would have done a lot worse than punch him!

I would like to know at what point freedom of the press ends and infringement on human rights begins?  Have you ever watched the news very carefully?  I realize this all seemed to start about the time we bombed Baghdad and we could set in the comfort of our homes and watch the war unfold.  I realize further that we need to know the conditions our servicemen are laboring under.  What happened to creative writing?  Why must we practice the  "picture is worth a thousand words" philosophy?

In the center of every picture is a human being.  The man with his leg blown off, the woman sobbing with her dead, bloody baby in her arms,  the bomb in the car, on and on and on we go.  This is sensationalism at it's very worst.  Every station tries to go one better than the one before it did.  Whoever shows the most blood on the 6 o'clock news wins the rating war.  I am sorry, I do not look at it anymore.

Reporters have their jobs and some of them I admire very much.  Right now we are in the middle of very frigid temperatures and I just seen a young lady explaining to me how dangerous the weather was.  I could have been a little more convinced had she actually dressed for the conditions and not had to be seen with her lovely hair whipping around her well manicured face.  Just me.

I was taught, and by a very able teacher she was, that I must make the reader see what I see.  I must get my thoughts into the readers head and make them feel what I felt.  The victim must remain faceless.  I am perhaps out of touch with the media reality of today, but out of touch I shall remain.  In all my writing you will find only the essence of pain, tragedy, or grief.  Does that make me a better reporter then the one who motions the cameraman forward to see the dying face of the rebel?  I sure like to think so.

And how do we go back to the old style of reporting?  We probably don't.  Our world has become a world where seeing is believing why bother visualizing when it is right there to look at, up close and personal.  I have found the off button on my set!

Have you ever been in a situation where you let your guard down because there was something more pressing?   Can you describe your pain you felt at the lowest moment of your life?  Or do you need someone to take a picture and show it to you as a bitter reminder?  I don't.  I can still feel the ache and raw grief in every fiber of my being.  Shall I describe it to you?