My obligatory mini-rant on current affairs

I must respectfully disagree. I'm not a big fan of Geraldo, but I don't think even he could over-dramatize what was going on.

What's going on is completely horrible, I agree with that. There are many, many sources that are telling us how abundantly clear it is that things are bad. My concern is how those sources choose to do it, which is why I have contempt for Rivera in these circumstances. My impression is that he came there to put his name on the news story, and the aftermath finally sank in much later.

What I thought was wrong was that any sort of over-dramatized attempt to push people into being on camera--people who have already been through enough emotional and psychological stress--comes across to me as ingenuine and disrespectful. Watching him grab a baby from a mother and telling the cameraman heatedly to have everyone "look at this face" [zooming in on baby's face] came out very desperate. I think the mother looked like she was in shock that this man, who she'd never met before, and certainly doesn't look like he's here to help in any way, would do this. Yes, there's a time and place to have people on camera to relay messages to family and friends that things are or aren't OK. Anything more than this, the equivalent of anchors standing in hurricane winds to show how the and it screams pandering and ratings. During this live feed, I nearly expected it to exacerbate the situation.

And, my problem (and maybe I haven't seen him in action enough) is that I couldn't draw the fine line between his usual journalistic over-the-top style, or him actually losing his composure. We were skipping through reports, and happened to settle on this channel, where no fewer than 3 anchors were very punchy and bordering on angry. All of them surely a product of the environment.

Now, if this seems slightly uninformed or out of place, keep in mind that I don't have a background in debate, and don't write political or media-based blog entries. It's not my area of expertise. And we can all agree to disagree.

Nope, I actually agree with you... :) So we can't agree to disagree, so there! ;)

Re Rivera, yes, I have a lot more respect for the people who were on the ground the whole time literally losing it; from what we know about Rivera crying wolf all the time, yeah, it's hard to take him seriously.

And there is a lot of gratuitous victim-mongering going on. Someone on CNN, I heard, was having an interview with a woman who said she was going to take her baby to the hospital as soon as she was done with the interview; at that point the interviewer should have said, thanks for talking to us, you go take your baby and good luck. But she kept asking like 8 more questions. !!!