It means even risking a serious conversation among ourselves not about a code of conduct but about what it is that journalism is in the first place and what our minimum obligations are. Poll after poll shows journalists ranking lower than political dog meat. This is the year we lost that reporter who called himself a poet, the Lower East Side's prophetic Mr. Allen Ginsberg. Dan Rather says we're no longer watchdogs but lapdogs. PBS told me that human rights is not a sufficient organizing principle for a television series, but cooking is.
African animals have no trouble getting on television, but African people do.
That continent virtually does not exist on most of the radar screens of American television. And it should because there are a lot of ople of African descent here, and many other people who are interested in Africa. And thank you, Saddam, for provoking a crisis during sweeps. My father had a third-grade education and was a truck driver and a Teamster. I'm very proud of my family's union roots.