Excellent answer, lon! My thoughts were much the same.

I happened to catch that very report yesterday while doing a couple of other things, and I was also shaking my head. My first thought was that they were both completely overdoing the "idiot" part, and overlooking the part where the person simply asked a question and there was no evidence of his or her personal feelings or intentions.

I was not surprised that the host was overdoing it, but was surprised that the "reporter" chimed in. I don't remember who the reporter was, but I seem to recall thinking that it must be one of the quasi-reporters who mainly just lets people know what is happening on CNN.com.

In my journalistic training and experience, it was very inappropriate. Completely carried away.

I believe Ion, while perhaps well intentioned, is entirely wrong. There are limits to one's ability to be truly neutral in any given matter as one cannot objectify the subjective anymore than generalise the specific, that much is true, the rest is tripe however.

Journalists are extremely privileged in their profession in as much as they are in a position to discern the face of truth through the veils of deception and have been largely trusted to do so. They establish sources to gauge context and authenticity in addition to possessing resources for investigating information and discriminating between what is substantiated fact and sensationalistic fodder. Within a society which values hard truths, however unsettling, and professional integrity, a reporter owes it to their clientele to remain as completely objective as possible. Obviously, certain subjective inclinations will reduce even the best work from being truly objective -the choice of the story, the facts considered, their representation are all facets of choices the journalist makes which will ultimately betray their bias in representing an issue- but merely because a thing is unattainable does not mean it should not be pursued.

I agree that the reporters you cite acted unprofessionally, but we live in an age where entertainers like Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh contend for public opinion rather than investigative reporters, where O'Reilly and Olbermann are considered informed commentators while your nightly news is mostly for the weather and local insight. If you wish to take a wistful look at the decay of western society, read the comments made on the satirical news produced by The Onion on Youtube -many of the videos are quite poignant in illustrating conflicting or irrational aspects of American cultural, specifically in regards to the media and politics- but many of the remarks made in response by the viewing public affirm a preference for those pseudo reporting programmes over legitimate news sources.

Partially, this stems from a lack of confidence in the media, which has strayed far from the principles of objectivity it once espoused. Another possibility, and far more worrisome, is that contemporary Americans would rather be amused than informed, which could ultimately result in an uncritical and easily incited populace lending themselves to manipulation by empty sentiment and specious rationalisaion.

I do not, like Ion, believe a reporters job is to merely regurgitate information in single serving articles for easy consumption. I believe their responsibilities transcend merely repeating facts, but rather reporting the truths which linger behind the facts. It is a fact, for instance, that in the first Gulf War Iraq invaded Kuwait for oil. . .but the truth of the matter is the Kuwaiti's were drilling laterally into Iraqi oil deposits and Iraq was protecting its own sovereign soil and future prosperity, resorting only to arms after diplomatic measures failed. That does not in any way redeem the Iraqi regime, I am only making the point that facts are convenient and the truths behind them are usually more complex and infinitely more important and that objectivity is the tool by which journalists wring the irrelevant and extraneous facts from an issue until only the condensed, hard truth remains.

Hmm... it depends on the media, but... at least in broadcast news, with *some* stations, they allow it as a matter of editorial policy for reporters who think they've got enough popular following to take the career risk of switching from reporting to editorializing to be allowed to take off the reporter hat and put on the editorial hat *after* the reporting is finished, and *after* they've made it clear to the audience that they're switching from reporting to editorializing... no?