The Buckle of the Bible Belt

One of the pleasures of visiting southern Missouri, where I grew up, is getting to read the regional newspaper again. The Springfield News-Leader is always good for some political and religious buffoonery. The weekend entertainment directory is in the “Faith” section. The Opinion and Letters columns could serve up fresh material for Jon Stewart’s Daily Show for months.

On one recent trip I came across an article about how tenuous the relationship is between NBC News and MSNBC. It seems the opinonated personalities of MSNBC are beginning to chaff the “real news” gathers in the regular NBC News department.

After complaints that NBC was blurring the lines between MSNBC opinion and NBC News by emphasizing that the two organizations were synonymous NBC News President Steve Capus had the temerity to say that viewers are smart enough to understand the difference. That’s a bet I’ll take any day.

I lean more on the side of the Project for Excellence in Journalism director’s statement, “Getting into the game of trying to attract an audience based on your point of view rather than reporting is dangerous…”