Regrets

No picture today friends. I can't.
I have very few regrets about my time as a reporter. I enjoyed almost every minute of a 25 year career.
But there is one story that has haunted me for years.
I'm going to try to be as vague as possible. I hope that you'll understand why.
Decades ago I met a man I came to really like. He was a local businessman and I was at his business a lot. We shared many a laugh.
Then came one tragic morning.
The man's son was killed. He was murdered by someone he knew. But he was an innocent. He was not the intended target. He was just in the wrong place, wrong time. Another man was shot and wounded. The gunman, who had a history of mental problems, turned the gun on himself.
I had to cover the story. My photographer and I were at the scene early enough to capture the scene and the removal of the bodies. Those are important pictures for television news.
The senselessness of the killing kept that story in the news for weeks, months and even years.
The victim's family later filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania charging the state was negligent in releasing the gunman from a mental hospital.
Each time I reported the story, my station aired those pictures of a young man's body being carried out of his home for the last time.
Each time, I forced his family to relive that terrible moment.
Because of that decision, the decision to show those pictures, I lost a friend.
Our paths would cross occasionally, but I did everything I could to avoid him. Because every time he saw me, he saw his son.
My friend died recently. I did not go to the viewing. Doing so would only bring more heartache to a family already overwhelmed with grief. I couldn't do that to them. again.
I said good-bye in my own way.
Perhaps his family can take comfort knowing that a father was reunited with a son he lost too soon.
I've told this story to a few colleagues. None of us has been able to figure out how to balance the right of the public to know and see what happened with the feelings of a family trying to come to grips with a tragedy.
I did my job differently after that.
The song says, "regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention."
This regret is worth mentioning, one last time.

60 Minutes

Like many Americans I watched, "60 Minutes" last night on CBS.
For the first time, to me, Barack Obama looked like he was the President of the United States.
It was a great example of what TV can be.
There weren't a lot of pictures.
Just words.
But those words were a first hand account of what happened at the White House when our second long national nightmare ended with the killing of terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Steve Kroft did a wonderful job of asking the questions for which Americans want answers.
It was a masterful piece of television.

On The Battlefield

Some thoughts on the death of Osama bin Laden.
He was not assassinated. He was killed on the battlefield. This time that battlefield was in Pakistan. It is true the United States has not declared war on Pakistan. In fact, the U.S. considers Pakistan an ally. We are at war with terrorism. The first act of that war came on September 11, 2001 when Al Queda terrorists used airliners as weapons and killed more than three thousand Americans on our soil.
Bin Laden vowed not to be taken alive. Mission accomplished.
Our military, acting with surgical precision, took out the enemy. It did so without the loss of an American life.
President Obama, in announcing bin Laden's death, paid tribute to the courageous men who carried out the attack and in the best speech of his presidency, tipped his hat to President George W. Bush and even called the former Commander-in-Chief.
I watched with some interest the pictures of celebrations in New York and Washington. I understand it. Still I was bothered by how much it resembled those third world demonstrations against the USA.
This is a war that sadly will never end.
For now, we have taken the war to our enemies.
Our enemies killed innocents.
We killed their leader.

Trumped

I cannot believe that President Barack Obama took the bait and released his long form birth certificate, hoping to bury once and for all suggestions that he wasn't born in the United States and therefore ineligible to serve as President.
Mr. Obama had been under attack for two weeks by Donald Trump. Trump, who says he is a Republican, is said to be considering a run for the presidency.
As soon as the announcement was made at the White House, Trump, in New Hampshire, told reporters he was, "proud of himself" for having forced the President to release the document.
And just as quickly, Trump seemed to move on. Now he's questioning the President's college transcripts. He wants to know how Mr. Obama went from Occidental to Columbia to Harvard.
Trump may actually have scored some points with the public on the birth certificate issue. But he'll lose credibility if he keeps advancing the causes of the "conspiracy" crowd.
I think the Donald has been "trumped."

Haley Barbour

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said today he will not run for President because he doesn't have the. "fire in the belly."
OK
Let's face it, Barbour is a white Republican, A white Republican from Mississippi.
Mississippi is a state that consistently finishes at the bottom of the list of states, unless the list is: name the worst state.
And Barbour's got a southern drawl that's thicker than molasses.
An old White Southern governor running against a young black incumbent President.
Yeah, that's a formula for victory.

Cable TV

I don't have cable television. I'm not home enough to make it economically feasible. Which is just a fancy way of saying, it's just too darned expensive.
But the advent of digital television transmission got me thinking; what if the most watched cable channels were available over the air.
WNEP offers Antenna TV on 16.2. I find myself watching it often.  But what if ABC affiliates were able to transmit other ABC properties like ESPN on its sub-channels. What if WYOU, a CBS affiliate could offer CNN. WBRE, the local NBC affiliate could offer MSNBC. Fox 56 could offer FOX News.
WVIA offers CreateTV on channel 44.3. It's a network dedicated to cooking, travel and how-to shows. It's not bad.With Congress threatening funding for PBS, why couldn't WVIA offer a popular cable channel on one of its sub-channels. Sell the local commercial availabilities and that could help pay the bills.
Why couldn't a local entrepreneur put a station on the air that simply ran popular channels that are currently only available on cable or satellite franchises.
There's plenty of space on the broadcast spectrum. It's time that some of it gets used to offer programming free of a cable or a dish.

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