by Peter H Frank | Oct 2, 2009 | Business, Politics, TV Commentary |
[Originally broadcast on Oct. 2, 2009, on The Frank Show, here.]
When I was growing up, there was one thing I heard as much as anything else. Say what you mean and mean what you say. My father was a newsman and to him, words were simple.
And his advice sounds simple. But it’s not. We all get stuck over-using, mis-using, even ill-using, the same words over and over. There are more than half a million words in an English dictionary. When we speak, it’s estimated we use about 2,000, less than half of one tenth of one percent.
So maybe it’s in our nature to pick words and overuse them.
I’ve been thinking about this because every day, in discussions, in headlines, on TV, I to see the word crisis. Crisis. Fix the crisis. End of the crisis. Anticrisis.
I know this has been feeling like a crisis. Especially to those who’ve lost their jobs. But to my mind, the economy is not in crisis. Not yet. And it hasn’t been. This is still just a recession. In the words of the IMF, a “severe recession.” Quite honestly, overusing the word crisis sounds a bit like an adolescent overreaction. If my daughter comes home and says she’s having a crisis, she had a fight with her girlfriend, the first thing I think is well, wait until you grow up. She’ll look back and laugh. By then, like most of us, she will have had to survive a real crisis. Because in a true crisis, you simply look to survive. In a recession, you look to manage.
Of course, given what’s happened this week in the government, we may well be on our way to a true crisis. Look at Argentina in 2002, or any of a number of countries who had the ability, but not the political will, to fix their budgets.
So I suggest we wait and save the word crisis for when we really mean it. Hopefully, we won’t need it soon. Until then, the word crisis will not be used casually on this program. Yes, it sells newspapers, makes a good headline, gets your attention.
But for the rest of us, I offer my father’s simple recommendation. It won’t fix the economy, but at least we’ll be meaning what we say.
by Peter H Frank | Sep 28, 2009 | Journalism, Media, TV Commentary |
[Originally broadcast on Sept. 28, 2009, on The Frank Show, here.]
Some years back, I read a quote from a famous British editor who was asked what it takes to be a journalist. He answered, in the fine sardonic wit of a good newsman, that it takes two things to be a journalist: a pencil, and a job on a newspaper.
Well, we don’t use these anymore. I brought this one in from home. But in many ways, he was right.
At our best, journalists are little more than clear-eyed observers whose job it is to watch, listen, and then scribble some words to tell you what happened. We are guided by simple principles: report and inform without fear of, or favor to, anyone. Some of us believe we should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To me, that is not the goal but it is often the result of good journalism.
Mostly, our job is to provide you the information you need to change the world should you believe the world needs changing. How it changes is not up to us, but to you.
But in this internet age, it becomes increasingly clear that the British editor, the one with his pencil and his job, left out a third essential ingredient in being a journalist – that is the reader, or in our case, the viewer.
Yes, we need you to watch. And for that to happen, we must give you news that you want and information you need. It is our job to decide some of that. That is what we are paid for, to sift through thousands of stories we see and hear each day and bring you what we believe, in our limited wisdom, are the most important.
But we are not perfect. And we are not everywhere. That is why we, at the Frank Show, welcome your news, your suggestions, your comments, about what’s important in your lives. And we ask that you send us those ideas.
We will endeavor to read them all. Of course, not every email will become a story. We don’t expect you to be a journalist. We cannot offer you a job. But at least we can give you a pencil.
