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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-- Do nothing I cannot defend.
-- Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
-- Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
-- Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am. Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
-- Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
-- Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.
-- Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.
-- I am not in the entertainment business.
These are words to live by -- and most news hacks haven't lived by them in years, especially numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8.
P. S. on 1/3/2010 at 6:42 p. m.: Count ourselves stooPID. We thought Mr. Lehrer was retiring; PBS only retired his name from its news show's title. Well, in so many ways the honor he exemplifies pretty well resigned from the TV news business long ago, if it every really had it.