Imus hurtful in more ways than one
It goes without saying that Don Imus gives journalism a bad name.
Heck, he gives mankind a bad name.
Forget that he’s not really a journalist; he’s a shock jock. The problem is that too many members of the public don’t make the distinction.
It’s not just the latest episode - insulting members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team with racial and sexist slurs. He’s been saying disgusting things for years.
Journalists like those of us at The Evening News often lament that the public perception of the media - our character, our values, our trustworthiness - is unfairly tainted by jerks like Imus who pretend to be journalists but follow none of the standards of decency, accuracy and balance that we hold close to our hearts
Imus doesn’t have any excuses. The brand of lowest-common-denominator talk show that he pushes isn’t really related to what real journalists do.
Unfortunately, I worry that consumers of the media don’t make the same distinctions that I do.