I've never understood how or why the media reports what they report and the priority they give stories. It seems that what I think belongs on "Entertainment Tonight" is the lead story on the nightly news. I ran across this little item and thought it represented how I feel.
"You're a 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the La Drang Valley, 11-14-65, LZ x-Ray, Vietnam. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 - 1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 - 200 yards that your own infantry Commander has ordered the Medi-Vac helicopters to stop coming in.
You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day. Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no Medi-Vac markings are on it....
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
He's coming anyway.
And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses. And, he kept coming back....13 more times...And took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise, ID....
May God rest his soul....
I bet you didn't hear about this hero' s Passing, but we sure were told a whole bunch about some Hip-Hop Coward beating the crap out of his "girlfriend".
Medal of Honor Winner
*Ed Freeman*
Shame on the American Media".
What other newsworthy stories will fall off the table so "Michael Jackson's" death is covered 24 hours a day.
7 comments:
Oh Bob how true and I could not have written that, because, you are right, I did't know.
Peggy
Well, we talk all the time about the news coverage, that we don't understand what makes some of it worth reporting. Just like when the news covers American Idol and such. I don't get it either.
There's a war?
Whenever I don't understand "why" about things like this (or even things not like this (!), in this day & age, in our society, it seems that too often the answer is the bottom line. The networks want to make money, to for the #1 slot, to tell their advertisers that the most people watch their network. So they broadcast what they think largest percentage of the public wants to hear. (I'll bet just a few folks at the top of the corporate food chain determine what gets broadcast. And...why.
That's what I think. Reporting to you live (for the moment) from her desk on Terriwood, this is Nana. Good bye and good night.
Seriously, Ed Freeeman's story is inspiring and heroic. I know there are many, many others who would say the same. They're out there, Bad Bob.
I heard people at work discussing the hip-hop guy/girlfriend after it happened, and I'd never heard of either. But Michael Jackson is big news. I don't grudge the media that one. He was never my cup of tea, but he's by far far far the biggest entertainment star of my lifetime, so I'd expect huge coverage.
begrudge
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