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Dear Lou,
Fist, let me say how glad I am that you are covering outsourcing. You have brought it to the forefront.
Having said that, the point of this letter is kind of related.
I watch your show daily, and today you were wondering aloud..."Why the ads have gotten so mean".
I am an ordinary person...a boomer, like yourself.. Here's my take on it.
The ads have gotten SO mean because the media (in general) has not been doing its homework. The time BEFORE an election is the appropriate time for investigating, vetting and darned near harassing the candidates to MAKE them tell us what makes them tick.
The 2000 election pretty much opened MY eyes.. All the media was interested in was their interpretation of Al Gore,the-man-who-lies-about-everything, and then there was George Bush, the-good-ole-boy-who-loves-his-Jesus-and-who'd-be-more-fun-to-hang-out-with.
That was the overall theme of media coverage. The stuff that's coming up NOW about his TANG "service" SHOULD have come up waaaaay back in 1999. It was all just neatly shoved under the rug, and we have all been tripping over that lump for almost 4 years..
Background MATTERS..
Anyone who aspires to be President, did not suddenly emerge, chaste and unencumbered, and ready to run. These men have "done things", "been places", "run companies","made laws",and they have led public lives. We MUST be told as much about them as possible.There is plenty of information about all the candidates. It's on video, it's in print.. It's EVERYWHERE.. The media's job is to sift through it, and to compare the candidates equivalently, so we can make a good choice.
When the media falls down, or worse yet, appears to be "soft" on one and"harsh" on the other, the public "gets it"..
Ordinary people have ways of researching their backgrounds, so why does the media seem so woefully uninformed? Do newsrooms not have access to phones and google?
Ads that were run by the Bush campaign, against McCain, in 2000 opened a lot of eyes,and the democratic party apparently paid attention. The tenor of the current ads are a response to the ruthlessness of the Bush camp.
The additional success of the Michael Moore movie, Out Foxed, and a torrent of other books and documentaries, just proves to me, that if "you guys" won't report on what's important, we will PAY FOR THE NEWS WE NEED, in order to know more about these men who claim to want to lead us.
It saddens me to realize that the airwaves that we give to the media,free of charge,are usually so wasted on trivial nonsense, instead of what they are there for. We live in a dangerous world, and we deserve better.
If you (in the collective sense) will not do your jobs, we will go elsewhere. The ratings of most "news shows" will bear me out.
I watch your show, Crossfire (when I can stomach it), PBS, C-span, and BBC.. But what I see there, is cross checked by visiting the internet and the news sources from all over the world.
Some may think that "politics is a game", but the game has changed now. Our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren depend on getting the best we can in office. It's too dangerous to have someone flailing around in office and endangering our economy, our international standing, and our very lives..
It's different now, and the media needs to start treating politics as if their lives depended on it.. because they do.
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