Rant #3,080: Good News (?)

“Beltzer.”

That is how TV news anchor Norah O’Donnell pronounced actor/comedian Richard Belzer’s last name during a short report on his passing last week on the CBS Evening News.

Why she mispronounced his name—it is said exactly as it is read, as Belzer—was infuriating, because here you are trying to report his death, and you can’t even get his name right.

Each time she said his name—and it was at least a couple of times—I cringed, because as the news anchor of this broadcast, she not only should have known the correct pronunciation, but it is her job to know how to say his name correctly.

But that is the state of TV news today.

This slip by O’Donnell not only shows that she is no Murrow or Cronkite, but quite honestly, that TV news ain’t what it used to be.

I am a big watcher of TV news—both local and national shows on the big three networks and the local outlets as opposed to national news networks like CNN—and this slip really opened up an old wound for me.

Today, TV news shows are more like appendages of “Entertainment Tonight,” and the same news shows covered Rihanna and her halftime show at the Super Bowl as much as they covered real news items, like the wild weather we are having across the United States this winter .., and by doing so, you might be entertaining, but you are not informing, which a news show is supposed to be doing.

Look, we all know that the news shows, both locally and nationally, are biased, bending over backwards to cover one side and never showing anything good about the other side.

As you probably know, I thought President Trump was a good president, but nothing but a crybaby when he lost the election, and the destruction that he directly caused on January 6 is something that should never have happened, and would never have happened if he did not spur it on—so I am not praising him in what I am going to say now, but only reporting what I saw during this Presidency.

But before these horrid acts, during his Presidency, he was never given an even break by the TV media nor the media in general.

When he did something good and newsworthy—and don’t doubt, in hindsight, whether we want to admit it or not, that he did do come good things—he was derided by the media.

For instance, he did put the creation of a COVID vaccine in motion, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.

Operation Warp Speed saved lives, as we now have a shot to prevent worsening effects of the coronavirus.

Sure, the President was a non-believer himself, but whatever the case, he got the ball rolling … but ever hear any praise from the media about this?

Heck, it wasn’t expected by me, since I saw right away when his presidency began that it took about a month for the TV media, at least, to call him not just :Trump” but “President Trump.”

And again, that is not lessening his misdeeds—which were many—but what I am saying here is fact … the TV media, at least, did not give him a fair shake from the get go, and thus, his mistrust of the media was born.

And in comparison, it appears that President Joe Biden gets the benefit of the doubt no matter what he says or does, and whatever the case, I have never seen or heard him derided by the TV news shows like President Trump was on almost a daily basis …

Which is kind of odd, since major news polls on Biden’s Presidency have shown that he is not a very popular President … nor was Trump, for that matter, but you kind of knew that by the reporting on these shows.

But let’s fast forward to today, when the TV media continues to twist major news items in one direction, and even worse, misreport news that greatly impacts our daily lives.

Because of their misreporting, the shots that were generated to ward off the coronavirus were originally marketed by the media as real vaccines, shots that if taken, would 100 percent prevent the shot taker from getting the virus.

That was simply extremely poor reporting, because as we know, these shots are simply mitigaters, preventing most shot takers from getting worse symptoms.

It is not a true vaccine, like the measles shot is, and this misreporting has spawned a whole group of people who not only don’t believe that the virus exists, but won’t get the shots even if it is proven to them that it does exist.

Their poor reporting about a “vaccine” forced dictionaries to change their meaning of what a vaccine is, for crying out loud.

And move things more into the present time, the TV media—and the media in general—again misappropriates words and phrases to suit their own needs.

Look at the illegal alien crisis that we are going through now.

The media has changed the phrase “illegal alien” to “migrant,” so as to soften its tone about who these people realky are. We see film on these news shows on a daily basis that shows how these people are being welcomed into America, almost as if they were conquering heroes when they get off the bus and clog our urban centers, including New York City.

And locally, the portion of Manhattan known as Harlem has been targeted for rehabilitation by these news shows, painted as if this area is the “garden spot” of the nation … and no other area of New York City—a city made up of distinct ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown and Crown Heights—gets this special coverage.

Once viewed as a crime-ridden cesspool, the area has its own ‘embedded” reporter on the local CBS outlet here in New York, who not only looks like she just stepped out of a past edition of Playboy Magazine, but who only covers the soft stories about Harlem.

When there is a disturbance there, a shooting, a drug bust or some other incident, this embedded reporter is nowhere to be found in the coverage of the story … and since these incidents continue to happen in this “garden spot” on a daily basis, you have to think that this supposed reporter was simply hired and ensconced as the show’s Harlem=embedded reporter because she is, in fact, nothing but eye candy.

That is not the right way to think, but unfortunately, this is the way it at least appears to be.

Sorry, Harlem is as far away from Disneyland in miles as in sensibility, and the placement of this supposed reporter in this area would make you think that she would cover both the good and the bad … but like it simply does not happen that way.

No, this is not journalism when compared to the Murrows and Cronkites of the past news business, but it is the way news is covered today, whether we like it or not.

“Beltzer” indeed.