 A story broke on 7 September about Charles Leaf of Fox News being accused of sexually assaulting a four-year-old child.
And I wonder: what is the real story here? Is it about Charles Leaf: The New Most Repulsive Fox News Reporter? Is it about this particular child and the attending epidemic of worldwide abuses against our children?
Or is the story some macabre parable of America (and maybe even the white western world) gone wrong?
Maybe the story is an allegory about the powerful (men like Leaf) and powerless (like the child), and what passes for "civilization" these days: an epidemic of woman and children sold into slavery, the rape and plunder of third world countries, and what plays as the pornographic orgasmic uberness of our own lives... in this bigger and more is better universe where everything has to be special, unique... it must be uber sex, uber religion, and uber partisan politics. Not to mention, um, uber consumerism.
trying to play a different game... writing in the rAw |
| But the title of this piece is "Journalism?" because I have to wonder how this story gets written and/or portrayed. Can we, despite our bent and biases, report this carefully, thoughtfully, and fairly? Do we have enough craft to leave the reader as the final decider of meaning, quilt, innocence, implications???
I first read about the story of Charles Leaf and this four-year-old child in diary at Daily Kos:
Fox News Reporter Arrested For Sexual Assault On A Minor.
The diary, in my read of it, is an effort to expose Leaf as one of the "bad guys" aka Rush/Glenn/Sean et al. The sexual assault of the child seems to be used as more "proof" to make the case of how bad this guy is.
The writer, KingOneEye, links to an earlier piece he'd written (also referenced above): Charles Leaf: The New Most Repulsive Fox News Reporter? writing that the article:
... details his aggressive, dishonest, and unprofessional behavior in covering real estate developers associated with the Park51 project in Manhattan (the non-mosque that is not at ground zero).
I've read KingOneEye's article at News Corpse and find it more an opinion of Leaf's aggressive, dishonest, and unprofessional behavior but I find it provides very little in the way of facts, links, or sources. I would not consider it a news story or even an editorial piece, which may be more opinion-directed but those opinions are backed up with links and sources.
While Leaf may be a bad bad man, how do we report the story? Is it the job of journalists to label people? Is that it? Do journalists TELL readers what to think, how to vote, what and who is good and what or who is bad??? Is this effective? Do progressives start emulating the right wing with our own left wing innuendo?
Journalism? For me, it's observers objectively (as is possible) reporting events and finding some mechanism to engage a reader's willingness to think about what is being reported.
Telling readers what to think about the subject of one's news story is not high journalist form, imo. It may even inhibit a reader's ability to develop new ideas , opinions, or think differently. Afterall, we do want people to think for themselves, don't we?
What do you think? |
