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Nutshell Kingdom: Opening Another Can of Worms (God forgive me for my earnestness and heal me soon)
2007
It's hard to take NBC's claim that they carefully deliberated airing jerk-off boy's manifesto when they followed this self-congratulatory claim by basically tape-looping for the footage for hours on end, only deciding to "limit" the airing of it after much public outcry. (By the way, calling that juvenile crap a 'manifesto" is a bit of a stretch; I may as well refer to my morning shower-singing of the Theme to Scrubs as my daily "manifesto;" it has as much value and provides the same amount of insight to my motivations).
A lot of people have stepped up to commercial television's defense and claimed that this tape/photos was newsworthy and therefore had to be shown, lest we traipse of down that oft-referred to Slippery Slope of self-censorship. And while agree that his making and mailing of materials is indeed newsworthy, I strongly disagree with the claim that this, alone, justifies its constant airing on the public airways. Editorial discretion is always in play and it is rarely called censorship. A recent example is last week's Don Imus coverage. Every major news network went wall-to-wall with its coverage of this story (which to my taste was only questionably newsworthy). However, not once did I actually see the clip of Imus using the phrase "nappy-headed hos." Simply put, networks decided that they could report this story (endlessly) without actually airing the offensive remarks. It's a pretty easy judgment call and one news organizations make all the time. The same is true of the WTC jumpers and the beheading footage of hostages.
This promotional/jerk-off tape was a far cry more objectionable than the incoherent ramblings of an irrelevant old disc jockey.
Was it news? Yes. Should it have been reported? Sure. Did it have to be shown in order to do so? I can't think of a single reason why. At least not a single reason that doesn't rhyme with honey or matings.
Anyway, I'm done with these jackasses. I'll be getting my news from NPR and Jim Lehrer for awhile. At least I won't have to deal with Wolf Blitzer's proud claim to an exclusive interview detailing Donald Trump's response to mass murder.
