CBS News announced Monday that it fired four employees who were involved in an erroneous story aired during the presidential campaign on “60 Minutes” about President Bush’s National Guard service.
The story contained several factual errors, relied on questionable sources and was based on documents whose authenticity was dubious at best. An independent panel found that the “myopic zeal” of the producers to be the first to break an important story in the heated election season played a big part in the decision to go on the air with such a thinly constructed and barely fact-checked report.
The Emerald applauds CBS News for taking a stand against sloppy journalism. In light of the recent Armstrong Williams scandal, certain pundits have suggested that the liberal media is attacking Armstrong merely for his conservatism. But sub-standard journalistic practices should be punished regardless of the ideological bent of the particular offender. CBS News made the right choice to ax not only the producer of the piece but the executives who were supposed to supervise it.
With major falsification scandals taking place at the nation’s most well-read and well-respected newspapers, journalistic credibility is in serious trouble in this country. News organizations must draw a hard line against unduly biased, sloppy or uninformed journalism.
Television romance not always fictional
News organizations around the world took a break from covering the tsunami disaster in order to cover another, much less important, disaster: the end of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s marriage. Normally the Emerald board wouldn’t dignify this story with a response, but in this case, the break-up of Hollywood’s golden couple has shined a spotlight on the pressures of modern relationships — pressures many college couples must deal with as well.
Tabloids are reporting that Aniston’s desire to focus on her acting career didn’t jive with Pitt’s desire to start a family, and that was the crux of the couple’s falling out. It is a case of life imitating art (or, more accurately, life imitating a network situation comedy): Aniston’s character, Rachel, in the hit show “Friends” broke up with the show’s central character, Ross, in part because of their difficulty balancing careers and dating.
When both partners have separate careers, even living in the same time zone can be difficult, especially for couples in the Pacific Northwest who don’t want to move to New York or Los Angeles. To avoid the stress and strain of a long-distance relationship, one partner usually has to compromise. And this can be the beginning of the end for a couple.
The last sitcoms of cultural importance, “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” were popular because they unveiled the dysfunction and confusion in our modern search for love without moralizing about the decline of traditional values. At the end of the day, we learned a pragmatic lesson from these shows: It is almost impossible to have it all. Relationships demand sacrifice, whether that means delaying a career or delaying parenthood. A couple where neither partner is willing to compromise is doomed to fail eventually.
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