COUNTERPUNCH LETTERS : The Sad State of TV News

I must take a moment to congratulate Gary Franklin on writing about a subject that’s dear to my heart--professional journalism (“CNN and CBS Radio Show the Way,” Calendar, Jan. 29). It is sickening every evening to turn on TV news and listen to story after story of drive-by shootings, robberies, gang shootings and teenage thefts, etc. The sensationalism young news writers try to write into a news bit is disgusting.

Unfortunately, Los Angeles TV stations’ news programs are a collection of “readers” who try to make news something it is not--just to grab the viewers’ attention.

My viewpoint is a bit different from the average as I am a journalist with 25 years’ service in the Air Force, now retired. I served in Japan, Germany and Korea, where we worked with real journalists every day. I held hundreds of news conferences for the military brass but never reached the low level of news dispersement we watch today on TV. It is truly refreshing to read such articles as Franklin’s.

Lt. Col. JOSEPH W. CARAWAY

Air Force (Ret.)

Laguna Niguel