MMMM # 431 -- Blind, Or At Least Shortsighted Reporters.

     When hundreds of protestors were crowding the steps to the Alabama Judicial Building in 2002 to protest the removal of then (and now again) Chief Justice Roy Moore's 10 Commandments monument, I had a momentary thought as I looked around at the crowd..      
     Was I witnessing the beginning of a great change in America?
     That proved not to be the case, but other reporters who have been present for such momentous beginnings have sometimes failed to see the significance of the events they were covering.

     The al.com website included one such example, an interview with an Alabama news photographer, Paul Robertson, who was at the center of two huge stories. He took the iconic photo of Montgomery police taking a mug shot of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was present as Rosa Parks was arrested on the bus...but did not take even a single shot of that second historic event.

     He told al.com:

"....the truth is I never thought a lot about that night and the decision not to shoot until years later. Even the King shot; it was just another photo to me at the time. None of us, and I mean us whites, really had any sense that the world was changing. I was just taking pictures."

     It's easy to look back and think we would have somehow seen the significance of the events, but probably not. I've taken thousands of pictures and done thousands of interviews, and it's impossible to say whether any one of them will prove to be somehow more important that they seemed at the time. 
     After all, I was just taking pictures, and asking questions.

[ALSO: Some poor corporate PR writing in a story about Remington opening a factory in North Alabama. It was suggsted that the company was slowly leaving their New York State home because of a gun control law approved there. Some PR type wrote:

"Remington will not run or abandon its loyal and hard working 1,300 employees without considerable thought and deliberation." 

    I am confident they did not intended to suggest they would run (from) and abandon those workers...after they gave it said thought and deliberation.] 

[AND: The Atlantic reported this week that the home of the 1st Amendment came out 46th in the world for press freedom in a new ranking.] 

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of TimLennox.com]