I know. They aren't going to care. But I felt a little better having gotten my words onto the keyboard. Not the same as pen and paper, but... eh. I will be sending letters to sponsors as well. Will it do any good? Probably not. But I am going to do it anyway. I am tired of having a news media that has no journalistic integrity. Below the fold I will paste my letter so that you can critique it for me. And maybe get your own anger regarding the media out on paper or keyboard and give them a piece of your mind.
I have been watching your show for some time now, preferring it over CNN most of the time. I enjoy Keith Olbermann as well as some of your other programming. But there is something that I find very disturbing regarding your approach to some of your reporting. I feel that I must address this issue with you now.
Your network has been misrepresenting stories in a manner which is at the very least factually incorrect and at the worst journalistic malfeasance. In regard with the Reverend Wright story, you took a clip that was taken completely out of context and presented it as fact, effectually assassinating the character of a man who has spent his life helping his community and others. With no sense of decency you have continued to present this story, misrepresenting the statements made by the reverend for no other purpose than to increase your ratings. Had you taken the time to check the Internet you would have with little difficulty found the complete sermon in context and would have seen that the reverend was quoting something someone else had said in an attempt to show how violence begets violence, and killing innocent children and people would bring the wrath of God.
Now, you interrupt a speech I was watching, where Barack Obama was talking about the economy and what he would do to address this economically troubled time. The economy is an important issue to myself and my family as well as the country. Yet you cut off Obama's speech to talk about Reverend Wright again. You thought that a newsletter was more important than the economy, apparently.
Nevermind that your report failed to mention that what was in the newsletter that you thought was so important was merely a reprint of something that had been posted in the LA Times last year. This, if I remember correctly, was not mentioned at that time when it was originally posted. Only now, when you are impugning Reverend Wright and Barack Obama does this seem pertinent. Nevermind the fact that you did not report that it was a reprint, but that I had to go on the Internet to find this fact out.
I am very disappointed in MSNBC right now. I find it appalling that your network could wield mistruths as easily as you do. How can one trust anything that you report when you repeatedly report things as fact which are in fact not true. Then you have the temerity to wonder why people look to shows like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as well as the Internet and international news outlets to get their news.
Please explain to me how this incessant howling about Reverend Wright is important to how I am going to feed my children? Please explain to me how this manufactured story is going to ensure that my family continues to have a roof over their head? How is this story going to make the families of 4002 fallen soldiers, not to mention the thousands who have been injured, be able to live without their loved ones who have died for a war that you and your 'journalistic' cohorts complicity forwarded with no regard for any truth or journalistic integrity.
I am educated, yes. I am a 35 year old married woman with two young girls that I would like to be able to be confident will grow up in a better country than we are seeing today. A country which seems more concerned about the 'ranting's of an old black reverend than the lies and destructive tendencies of our current resident of the White House and his vice president. A country which seems more concerned about the electability of a woman or black man than the issues which the electorate would need to consider who would be the best suited to help bring our country out of this recession and regain at least a semblance of the good will this administration has squandered throughout the world.
I hope that it is only your reporting that is representing the country in this way. I hope that Americans are not so interested in such things instead of the economic turmoil that we all face right now. I also hope that your organization would be the journalists that you try to present yourselves as by investigating the facts and reporting factually accurate stories instead of regurgitating falsehoods presented on right wing blogs or on Fox news.
I expect to be sending letters to your sponsors as soon as I send this to you. I hope that you will reconsider your current lack of journalistic integrity. Please be the news organization that you can be, instead of the sensationalist tabloid organization that you seem to have become.
Thank you for your time.
Eileen J. Ostrander