what a lousy job

Wherein Fox News and CNN see what they want to see in the SCOTUS 'Obamacare' opinion and botch the whole shooting match in front of a live audience

This is not going to be Monday morning quarterbacking, namely because I'm not some fan who played high school ball 30 years ago and remembers just enough to criticize the NFL guys on the field - I'm a longtime journalist who is still actively in the profession and knows what she's doing. I've reported on national news stories, and I've reported on extremely tight deadlines. I've also been wrong before, though to be fair, I can only remember one time I botched a story this badly - and it had to do with misinterpreting dollar amounts in a law enforcement budget, many years ago when I was still a relative amateur at a small newspaper. That's my disclaimer.

These clips were painful to watch, and I'll tell you why - because THIS is what the majority of Americans think all reporters are like all the time: Careless, dumb, failed idiots who couldn't get a job being paid more doing something harder. EXCEPT THESE PEOPLE ARE ON NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION AND ARE PAID A HELL OF A LOT. It ought to attract the brightest and best, not Dumb and Dumber.

As a reporter, as a former paralegal for several years, I've read court opinions - I've read them at the local and state levels, the federal level. I've even read SCOTUS opinions. I've read a LOT of court documents; I've written a lot of court orders, petitions, and other documents. And I'm still not what I would consider smart enough to be a "law reporter" for a major network - but I'm apparently more with-it than what CNN and Fox are sending out these days to cover such major stories. And I'm telling you, there's a way to skim a document like that opinion and come up with a basic 30-second statement as to what it's about and the outcome - that's all that's needed for the "breaking news" part. Let the lawyers and professors wrangle over the details in a pundit show later on the same network - your job is to simply see what the decision is and report it, along with some details from the body of the damn thing.

I tell you what, if I were skinnier and better-looking, I get the feeling I could run the hell out of my own cable news show as the anchor - just by using common sense. Reporting the news really isn't so hard; any of you who can read and comprehend could do a basic job of it. There's no special education you need or fancy degrees (but, I would expect a major cable news network to spend the money to hire someone who HAS such a degree if they're going to go reporting on THE major legal decision of the past two years).

/headdesk

why did we have to see the courtship, then?

I don't care about celebrities' personal lives, by and large, so the particulars behind the whole Katie-Tom divorce are not my business anyway. But here's what I want to know: Why is it every time this happens to a high-profile couple, the statement is almost always a variation of "please respect their privacy at this time?"

Where was their own respect for their own privacy when Tom was leaping on a sofa, or they were canoodling up and down the Seine on that boat? (Or was that the Thames? Gosh, I forget; sorry.) Where was it during their whole loud, brash, very public, wave-it-in-your-face teeny tiny courtship? If you want privacy for bad personal stuff in your life, then want it for the good personal stuff, too. Lots of celebrities go out of their way to keep their dating life relatively quiet, or simply acknowledge the press and move on if spotted.

And the puzzling part is, it's not like Tom Cruise has needed stunts to buoy his career since maybe the 80s - he's always in plenty of notable films, and he's a good actor. Weird.