My fascination with the Beltway media started back in 2007. As a result, I became more attentive to the workings of the United States government. Then the 2008 presidential campaign season started and the news outlets got worked up into a frenzy. There was round-the-clock coverage of the latest drama or issue deemed controversial. The focus was on politics and not policy.
With the 2012 presidential campaign getting under way, I’m witnessing the same occurrences. Whether it is Donald Trump asking to see the president’s birth certificate or the news stations trying to give praise to George W. Bush for the death of Osama Bin Laden, the fourth estate is doing a huge disservice to the American people. However, there are voices in the media that still serve as beacons of integrity and present the news to the people in a fair, honest, and informative way. From where I’m sitting the person who most exemplifies this is MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow host of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
After watching “Meet the Press” with David Gregory interviewing presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and the political roundtable that followed, I got the feeling that the Beltway media only cares about politics. This makes me realize how much I appreciate the work done by Rachel Maddow. She is a breath of fresh air in the political arena. When she gets overly excited about a particular issue, you can see the glee on her face. She is honest when dealing in politics, and with the upcoming political circus that is coming to town, the country will benefit from all Maddow has to offer.
Night after night Maddow displays true journalism. During her infamous interview with now-Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Maddow demonstrated how a journalist should conduct an interview. In an attempt to get Paul to clarify his stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he seemed to say in an earlier interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal he would have opposed, Maddow was able to get Paul to state that he was not in agreement with the Civil Rights Act because it applied to private business, and government has no role in the private sector because of the First Amendment.
The brilliance of the interview was that Maddow did not have to state her opinion for her point to be made. Watching the interview I was literally glued to the television in utter amazement at her uncanny ability to get Paul to unequivocally state his opposition to a matter as important as the Civil Rights Act. At the conclusion of the interview, I developed a passionate feeling that Rachel Maddow is the best journalist I have ever witnessed and individuals studying journalism at that moment would be better off if they took notes from her.
Unlike most political commentators on the news during primetime, Maddow, a staunch liberal, stands out from her peers because of her exceptional talent for actually doing investigative journalism and mixing in her political commentary without propagandizing. Maddow is identified as a journalist and not just a commentator because she actually examines her news stories and goes above and beyond the work of your average talking head.
