NANCY PELOSI'S TRIP TO SYRIA-- AND WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH CARLOS AMEZCUA?

-by Illumen


On KTLA this morning, April 4, Carlos Amezcua once again abused the responsibility he has as a journalist to report the news in an unbiased, professional manner. Concerning the trip by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Syria, he said in effect, "I wish they'd given me the money it cost to send her on that trip!"

If he has any pretense of being the KTLA Morning Show news anchor, then he should either uphold the tradition of the Fourth Estate to report the news objectively or retire to Fox News where he can pervert the facts freely among friends to reflect his own conservative view point.

Southern California deserves more than reckless editorializing by one who represents to many their only source of news. His job, as patriarch of that broadcast, is to respect not only his audience, but the most basic code of ethics for any true journalist. To wit, he has no right to manipulate the public by asserting his own opinion on the news.

Had he been better informed, he would have noted that two days before Representative Pelosi’s visit, Syrian President Assad met in Damascus with Republican House members who included Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts and Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt.

One can only imagine why Mr. Amezcua chose not to comment on that visit by three Republican male Representatives, but found it appropriate to make a snide remark about California’s own Nancy Pelosi of whom we should all be proud. This is not the first time that Amezcua has overstepped his bounds. Since she achieved her landmark position as House Speaker, a historical moment for all women regardless of political affiliation, Amezcua has continued to color his reporting of her with personal asides in a manner that no other anchor, or reporter for that matter, working in Southern California has sunk to aside from, of course, his fellow "Bushies" at Fox News.

A journalist’s job is to inform, not influence particularly in these volatile times and certainly not to simply parrot the Bush administration’s party line. We have already seen how the media’s collusion in that type of jingoism has resulted for the US on the world stage and the damage it has caused for generations of Americans to come.

In the event that I am wrong about his party favors, so to speak, then might Carlos simply be just a good old fashioned sexist? For that, I would expect his co-anchor Michaela Pereira, an otherwise vocal feminist, to step up and ride herd on him if the KTLA management will not.

While the US electorate showed in the last election their decision to effect change in our Federal government, for the accurate dissemination of news to inform those crucial decisions, change must begin at home.
 

NOISE FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY


The wingnuts have been howling at the moon because Speaker Pelosi had the Not-Ugly-American attitude of wearing a headscarf when she visited religious sites in Syria. I guess they never saw the photos of their Condi and their Bushie. Or maybe, like Amezcua, they just don't care. I bet they didn't care about Denny Hastert's treasonous little trips overseas either.

Meanwhile, Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) knows exactly how to handle these right wing press whores. My pal Oliver Willis has the video of Cummings slapping down Tweety on MSNBC today, a textbook example of rejecting the loaded premise of a question and giving a straight-up answer, in this case, about the Speaker's apparently very productive trip to Syria.