celestialthots

There are a lot of things that Sorkin actually gets right. How the reports are put together and the pressure of getting sources to commit and all that is correct.

The main thing I see is that we don't talk as much as they do. haha! When you're covering breaking news, you assign people to do certain things (like making calls, etc) and then you all disperse to do your tasks while the anchor is on the air frantically reading AP reports and looking for new information. We don't have the time to chat like they do. We generally have one news meeting a day and it's focused on just assigning stories and getting on with it.

Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with Al Jazeera America. They seem to be sincerely focused on doing serious reporting and catching the stories no one else is interested in covering.

The BBC, of course, is great.

Not in public radio - we can't afford that many lawyers.

But every story is fact checked by the editor, the senior editor and the host. So there are multiple pairs of eyes looking for errors. Stuff still gets through, though.

I know NPR peeps are really, really careful about anything that could be inflammatory. The editors are always reining me in.

I'm pretty impressed! No one has asked me what celebrities are the meanest, smelliest, smartest, etc...

Not sure what the relationship is at the management level. For reporters and hosts, we're not competitive. Pub radio is a small world. We've all worked together at some point or will work together. They're our colleagues and we love them.

I'm so glad you asked about Middle Ground. Here's a link to the Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/542039841/middle-ground-0

I've wanted to do this for years. I started in radio at KNAU in Arizona and then spent more than a decade in Detroit and I found that national reporting on the middle of the country is really, really bad. Instead of using the reporters who live there and are invested in the community, networks will fly in reporters for 24 hours. That's not how you get great coverage.

I think part of the reason we're so politically polarized is that Americans neither know nor understand one another, and it's very easy to hate "the other". It's really easy to see "the other" is not human. So the more we know about each other, the more empathy we'll have, the closer we can come as a country.

There are really incredible stories waiting to be told. I hope we get the funds we need to launch this show. I'm SO passionate about it and really believe in the mission.