I have just finished sampling a month’s worth of the Albuquerque Journal, the papers I missed while in China from mid-July to mid-August. And the very last issue before my return, August 15, grabbed me.
Leanne Potts has a story suggesting that anchors at Channels 4 and 7 violated journalistic rules – like impartiality – when they praised Governor Richardson at a conference of governors in Santa Fe.
Potts did a fine job, putting the issue clearly and delicately. I did smile, however, at the article’s serious tone. Like raising the question, with a straight face, of whether the anchors damaged their credibility. Credibility?
And I giggled at the lame defenses offered by the KOAT news director and KOB-TV station manager.
As for the references in both headline and story to "TV journalists" I would have guffawed if sadness had not come over me.
I do not blame the anchors; they are merely making a living in a system that dominates them. But that system, local TV news, has had only the slightest relationship to journalism for years now.
Can you imagine the Governor’s office inviting them and writing scripts for them if they were in the journalism biz?