A 10-year news industry veteran explains that it’s a lot different than it looks from the outside:
After spending over a decade working in medium-sized cities for different television affiliates of ABC, NBC, and CBS, I came to the conclusion the industry does nothing but spew corporate, government, and Marxist propaganda nonstop. I was not content to spout this propaganda any longer, and I had to get out.
I went into the career with quite a different illusion. From childhood, growing up in the country we believed in the illusions the puppet masters in the “big city” media were creating. The media’s vision of the world and of our government led us to believe it was all truly a shining city on the hill, and journalists were wonderful people serving the public interest and looking out for the little guy.
Growing up a poor kid, with no connections, no race or gender card to play, and no money, landing a job as a news anchor seemed like a far off fantasy. Many in high school, including my teachers believed I could never make it. After driving off to college in a broken down car with $800 in my pocket, hitting the ground running in a different state 500 miles from home, often working two jobs, I pushed harder than the other kids at my school and landed an on-air position while in college.
Further hard work and sacrifice landed me another job and then another in a highly competitive field. Meantime, I could have been out doing blow off a whore’s ass instead of studying calculus and other tough subjects, effectively sacrificing some of the best years of my life, but I figured the payoff would be worth the sacrifice and pushed through.
However, I began to lose respect for the media once I found out the truth about who works in it, how it operates, why it operates, who it operates in the interest of, and how it was treating me. Here are five reasons I grew to despise the mainstream media before striking out to do my own thing.
Can confirm. I was frankly astonished when I visited the building at KARE-11 in Minneapolis in 1993 or thereabouts. I had an on-set test there when they were considering the idea of having a regular segment on games; it did not go well, partly due to me, and partly because they insisted on having me play the game live while the anchor stand-in was talking to me.
But having been accustomed to corporate comfort, and being familiar with corporate luxury, it was really bizarre to see the faded carpets, the seventies furniture, and the cheap office furniture that looked like they’d inherited it from Honeywell in the 1950s.
And the sets are freaking cold! That’s why you never see them sweat, they’re all half-frozen to death.
Due to my newspaper column and being on the board of a TV station, there were a few media folks I got to know over time, and one or two I even came to like. But in the case of the latter, they were guys who had other things going for them than just their news media careers.