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Hey, Maybe This Will Win An Award!

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: Tell you what: those national news-media folks in America are awesome. I know, right? I mean, when I was a young aspiring journalist (I think it was during the Taft administration), they made us report boring stuff, like facts. It must be much more fun to be a journalist these days, when the industry has evolved beyond all that....

Hey, Maybe This Will Win An Award!

If I Stay Away From Facts, Maybe I Can Make The ABC Team Tell you what: those national news-media folks in America are awesome. I know, right? I mean, when I was a young aspiring journalist (I think it was during the Taft administration), they made us report boring stuff, like facts. It must be much more fun to be a journalist these days, when the industry has evolved beyond all that.

I did win some awards as a journalist, sure, but it was just for weird stuff like "straight news reporting." I doubt they even have that category anymore. Instead, if you want fame and glory as a national reporter now, you better have a Tolkien imagination for conspiracy and a Spielberg eye for theater. Finding stuff out is too easy. Making it up is hard... and, evidently, much more award-worthy!

So it's no shock that this year's Edward R. Murrow Award for "video continuing coverage" went to (drum roll, please)... Brian Ross and the "investigative" team at ABC News! Yay! Congratulations to Brian for his boffo "work" on the "story" about the alleged "problems" with Toyota's runaway accelerators.

All the media imagined (oops, I mean, "covered") the Toyota story, of course, but it was Ross who staged the now-famous "death ride" in a Toyota rigged to accelerate without input from a driver. The piece featured a shot of a tachometer racing to 6,000 rpm - a shot now reported to have been doctored.

As a journalist, you want impact. The liberal-dominated industry learned a few years ago that just reporting facts doesn't get you enough of the right kind of impact, though, so now we get these made-for-TV specials that rival anything Hollywood produces. And talk about impact! Ross and Company got no less an illuminary than the U.S. Transportation Secretary to tell anyone owning a Toyota to "stop driving it." And they dug a big hole in that Evil Corporation, as Toyota's market share dropped and its stock plummeted 20%.

But after ten months of intense study, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA were unable to find any problems with the cars themselves. Hmm. In fact, they say the "vast majority" of the runaway Toyotas were caused by the drivers mistakenly punching the gas instead of the brakes.

Oh, well, no matter. It was still an awesome (and now award-winning) piece of what we now call "journalism," and you shouldn't trouble your pretty little head over the trivial fact that it wasn't really all that true, so much. Just make sure you don't start a business, or try to run one, if there's any chance you're going to be the target of Brian Ross' imagination.

Maybe this piece you're reading right now will win an award! Oh Boy!

Wait. No, as I read back through it, there are far too many facts in this thing. Dang! Old habits do die hard, but if the talent scouts from ABC are reading, please know that I'll try to do better next time.

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Article Tags: entrepreneurship, inspirational leadership, personal responsibility, wealth building



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