Last week I took part in a training session on social media. Honest – I still don’t get it. Blogs make sense to me; it is similar to a newspaper or television broadcast. Social media has always been somewhat foreign to me; but, the idea of communication crossing time and space, bringing the world closer together is intriguing. It took centuries for the stories of the ancients to be codified, written, and shared globally. It took hours for coverage of man walking on the moon to reach into people’s homes. It took seconds for the World Trade Center disaster to be transmitted. Social media is immediate and breaks barriers – I get that.
CNN correspondent Rick Sanchez was fired today. Sanchez, a part of CNN since 2004 had moved from overnight to weekends to afternoons and even primetime. His niche at CNN was creating a dialogue with viewers through blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Sanchez broke down the wall between audience and anchor. His style is brash and had attitude. Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw would cringe listening to his broadcasts because as a viewer you knew Sanchez’s personal beliefs. From the perspective of social media, he was a master. “Rick’s List,” morphed between news of the day and Barbara Walter’s annual most intriguing personalities.
Sanchez’s journey from the Atlanta CNN anchor chair to unemployment came a day after calling Jon Stewart “a bigot on a radio show interview where he also questioned whether Jews should be considered a minority.”
The destruction of the Fourth Estate coincided with 24/7/365 news cycles. Ironically, the grandfather of continuous news was CNN. As the demand for new, fresh news has grown, the definition of news has changed. Once the titular leaders of news fell – the great daily newspapers, three national public broadcast networks and their news divisions, the need for each news organization to have a differentiated voice allowed personality to dominate over credibility.
Social media should not take all the blame. William Randolph Hurst started wars with his newspapers. Benjamin Franklin originated newspaper tabloids in a burgeoning United States and encouraged his readers to make their voices heard in the print. Who’s to say that Moses didn’t add his own personality to the 615 commandments as he was interpreting the word of God?
Jon Stewart‘s Daily Show on Comedy Central found comedic fodder in Sanchez’s “daily conversation” as he phrased the content of his news broadcasts. Stewart said that “his show had received a tweet from House Republican leader John Boehner. Stewart called it a case of “send a twit a tweet.”
Sanchez stated, “He’s upset that someone of my ilk is almost at his level,” as part of a satellite radio interview. At that point the Fourth Estate assumed the fate of the lost city of Atlantis. In case it isn’t clear – Sanchez is a broadcast journalist on a cable news network. Stewart is a comedian on a parody broadcast that airs on a network called Comedy Central.
Note: During the last election Millennials were surveyed and said that the Daily Show was their primary source of news.
Sanchez said, during the interview that Jon Stewart was “(bigoted toward) everybody else that’s not like him… (Stewart) can’t relate to what I (Sanchez) grew up with,” in a reference to his birth in Cuba, immigration to the United States, and growing up economically poor. Sanchez referenced his being a member of a minority in the United States. When the interviewer commented that the Jewish Stewart was also a minority, the response from Mr. Sanchez was:
“I’m telling you that everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?… (sarcastic) yeah…I can’t see someone not getting a job these days because they’re Jewish,”
Last week I sent my first Tweet. For my oldest son, this was worse then when I friend-ed him on Facebook. Back in the day, instructors at my Jesuit high school taught it was improper to write in the first person, use of personal pronouns in research paper was an immediate letter grade down, and balance was required when presenting an argument. I may be connected and trying to find my social media voice, but I still want the ability to access a free and unbiased press. Sanchez fell prey to social media. By participating in a conversation with America he moved away from being its facilitator to being just one of the voices. At that point he was just one of us and was not capable of retaining his “bully pulpit.”
The words of Rick Sanchez are abhorrent to me personally and professionally. Kudos to his parents for giving him a different life from the one the knew. My tweet to Mr. Sanchez is:
Sanchez – apologize to your parents. You wasted their gift to you. You are no better than the tyrant they left behind. Shame on you. Tweet that.
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