God Bless the United States

I have been following this story.
What surprises me is that United States is saying very little or telling Israel to find another "punishment."
Israel has laid siege to Palestine. People were starving and forced to blow holes in the fence separating Egypt from the Gaza strip so they could get food. And why were the people of Palestine being punished by Israel? Hamas fired rockets into Israel.
The sad thing is that the U.S. is appears to be endorsing this act.





Image from the New York Times

Larry King you S.O.B.

Alright, unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of hours Heath Ledger is dead.
I'll be the first to admit that Mr. Ledger's untimely death shocked me. I think my jaw even dropped when I saw the headline on CNN.com. However, does this really need to command an hour of continuous news coverage?
Once again Larry King has changed his program to cover a celebrity death in a matter of hours. It first happened last year when Anna Nicole Smith died. Now Mr. King is dedicating his show to the coverage of Mr. Ledger's passing.
I am sorry but this is ridiculous.
If you want to cover "entertainment news" then join the E! network, Entertainment Tonight, or some other show. Please get off CNN which is supposed to be a respectable "news" organization. And don't get me wrong because CNN is my news network of choice...probably because I have a man-crush on Anderson Cooper.
Every day the media is assaulted and then Larry King Live does this.
I seriously want to shoot myself in the face listening to these "hard-hitting questions" that are being asked about the factors surrounding the death of Mr. Ledger.
Something is wrong when I would rather watch Fox News than CNN.
Remember: "The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. [For] to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - the better the teacher, the better the student body." -- Warren Buffet

Newspapers

"The liberty of the press is essential to the security of the state" --John Adams

I've only been in the newspaper business for a little over a year and a full-time reporter for only five months and I am already asking "why am I doing this?"
It is just amazing when I hear feedback from the public from an article I wrote. They claim I "misquoted them" after I tape record almost every interview/meeting I attend.
I have sat at a council meeting and listened to a citizen say they read something in the Press And Journal [something I had written] and when they make their claim they miss entire point of the article.
Maybe my writing is too complicated and I am not writing at an elementary school level.
The Middletown borough manager wrote a letter to my editor stating that my article about his suggestion of licensing landlords was completely wrong [the letter was published in the P&J]. Even though that same borough manager said I wrote a good article but he was unhappy with the headline, which I do not write.
Naturally my editor was pissed off wondering how I could make such a mistake until she went back read my article, then re-read the borough manager's letter. Her conclusion -- I did nothing wrong because everything the manager's letter "corrected" was already in my article.
I just do not understand people. We are continuously ripped apart on local forums and the P&J's "Sound Off" feature.
Our staff [which consists of three people and a handful of freelancers] bust our asses week after week to put out a quality publication. [some would dispute that]
I truly think there is a love hate relationship between people and their newspapers. They hate the newspaper when they don't see something they like, but if the newspaper did not exist people would not know what to do.
I guess all I can do is just keep on doing my job.