Media critics are being way too harsh, complaining that TV network news anchors and TV news magazine hosts are more entertainers than journalists. TV viewers think otherwise. They observe and believe reports from all these TV news anchors, male and female. And the viewers ask, "What's not to believe?"Sure it's true that the biggest names in TV news are raking in millions of dollars in income a year just like the moguls and tycoons they report on. That's just as it should be. That equality in income allows TV anchors to have more empathy and compassion with the newsworthy folks in the same general social strata.
Of course TV anchors should hang around at the same country clubs, tennis courts, and golf courses with big names heard in the news. What good would high pay for TV news people be if it didn't get them entry to the movers and shakers of the world?
Being rich also gives TV news anchors a unique perspective on small wage earners. Such low-level individuals, basically most Americans, have nothing in common with wealthy TV anchors, therefore the anchors can be totally objective in reporting on matters concerning run-of-the-mill folks.
Because TV news anchors belong to the upper echelons, close proximity can and sometimes does lead to dating amongst single (we hope) TV news people and the rich and famous. Consequently, critics should not elevate their mood to high dudgeon when these dating super-couples decide to marry. It's understandable that TV news personalities seldom report on or interview their own spouses or dating partners. If they did, it would be unethical journalistically. Such reporting can wait until after the divorce.
What with all this socializing, even that which doesn't lead to romantic entanglements can, and often does, lead to other intimacies, like investment suggestions and tax-avoidance schemes. Naturally, stocks and bonds are bought and sold by both sides of the TV news equation. After all, it's a free country.
The TV news people will still report fully and fairly on money and tax matters. Hard-hitting investigative reporting on financial matters are freely and frequently aired. It's not the TV news people's fault that such programs are often on after midnight.
Yet media critics are being overly sensitive about all this buddy-buddy stuff between TV news anchors with their news subjects. Anyone with two good eyes can plainly see, merely by glancing at TV news programs, how penetrating they are.
It's far too early, then, for observers of the TV news scene to be calling for the end of national network news programs in favor of local TV station news reports. Small town local TV news folks have nowhere near the income of their bigtime counterparts, so they can't possibly know about higher economics, not having experienced it themselves, nor do they have access to or understanding of the wealthy and sophisticated.
A final advantage of high salaries for TV news people is that it proves that those who say the media is too liberal are all wet. After all, no one making over a million dollars per year is truly liberal!
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