Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

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THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.

PERMALINKS:

THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY

THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY

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Friday, February 07, 2003

Posted 6:51 PM by Gene

The very glib Jonah Goldberg is wrong. I didn't detect overkill in the Columbia coverage (although I took pains to avoid the TV end). The disaster deserved banner headlines; it's hardly every day that astronauts voyage into space. I've found most of the reports to be, if anything, understated. That the foam-wing connection has not become a national frenzy owes to the fact that, even a week out, we hardly know anything about what happened, and must speak in the measured words of science. (I notice Jonah provides no specific examples of overkill. Glibness conquers all.) Which isn't to say the news hacks should rest easy over their reputations: The last decade has seen a series of frenzies that have utterly annihilated them, from Nancy and Tonya to OJ to Princess Di to the 9/11 anniversary, and it does not take much to provoke a flood of bad writing and specious psychologizing from these folks. It could have happened last week; thankfully, it didn't.

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