A while back I left a comment on someone else’s blog (can’t find it or I’d link to it) in which I said some rather critical things about TV reporters and their writing abilities.  Lenslinger quickly, and rightly, took me to task.  He pointed out how hard it is to write stories on the fly, match it to video and then get it even semi-coherent for the air.  That was just one reminder about how easy it is to criticize and how much harder it is to actually do anything.

It’s easy to critique an author’s book, but incredibly difficult to write your own.  It’s easy to tell a waiter how to do his job, but when’s the last time you carried five plates on your arm without spilling?

I was reminded of this by Lenslinger’s post "Ten Things I’d Teach News Reporters."  You get an appreciation for how much goes into a nightly newscast, even when it doesn’t go well.  Of course we can, and should, criticize anyone who can do good work but doesn’t, just as we can be criticized when we don’t do our jobs well.  These folks choose to do their jobs in public and as a result they open themselves up to criticism by a far larger audience than the rest of us can even imagine, but that’s the road they chose.

There are other jobs that open the practitioners up to public criticism.  Professional athletes come to mind, and on this election eve so do politicians. I’m sure that politicians’ jobs are harder than we’d like to admit, but at the same time the power they wield demands that we be highly critical of them.  If TV reporters screw up the worst thing we get is bad TV (who’d notice?), and if professional athletes screw up they get check mark in the "L" column, but if politicians screw up we get, well, screwed.

While reading Lenslinger’s piece I remembered how pissed I got the first time I got a negative comment on this blog, and I remember how agitated I was when some troll got on here and started giving me hell.  I also remember thinking, "How do public people do this every day?"  So, yes I’m appreciative of the thick skin that all people in public life must have and I wonder why they do it.  I’m also trying harder to appreciate the hard work that goes into what these folks do, but I’m also not going to give anyone a free pass when they don’t do their jobs well.  In the case of a bad on-air report I’ll probably just laugh and say something like "that was inane", but in the case of politicians I’m gonna squeal like a stuck pig and demand better.

And, oh yeah, I’m gonna try and toss the rascals out.