Marci Shatzman's Rude Awakening

Sometimes God is good to conservative journalists. Thank you, God, for Marci Shatzman.

Shatzman, a reporter for the Sun-Sentinel Forum Publishing Group and not a conservative journalist, was covering a meeting Tuesday night of the West Boca Community Council when featured speaker Andre Fladell tore into the media.

He doesn't like the media's use of cellphone cameras, doesn't like today's reporters who lack the judgment to discern real news before airing it, is convinced modern journalism is drowning out accuracy with its own ambition and irresponsibility.

And here was the big one: Journalists have no respect for their own profession no respect for their country, Fladell said, calling them self-serving" and "incompetent.

Shatzman apparently couldn't take it anymore. The insults! The lies! How dare he? She leaped up from her chair and, as if on cue to prove Fladell right, angrily unleashed her disgust.

I totally disagree Im a member of the press, she shouted. Im not going to sit here and listen to this crap. Im leaving.

BizPac Review President Jack Furnari, another speaker, sat next to Fladell with a wry smile throughout. Somehow, he contained himself.

On the way out, Shatzman threatened a boycott of any more community council meetings that wont get one goddamned bit of coverage.

Shatzman, sadly, is a microcosm of what's happened to my profession. Journalists of the 21st century, it seems to me, live in a bubble. Their view of the world is a conversation with each other. It breeds arrogance and deafness.

No wonder Marci Shatzman doesn't know or has forgotten that the same document that gives her license to write gives Fladell and anybody else the right to speak. And doesn't that make ours a great country?

At least now she's had a rude awakening and discovered there are people out there who think our profession deserves to be as battered and bloody as it is, that it's nowhere near living up to its high purpose, and that many of us who practice it are, well, despicable.

My advice to her is, next time, zip it up. Writers seldom do well when they open their mouths. Take your revenge on the commentary page (and on no other page).

Read the full story in BizPacReview by my pal, Joe Saunders. It's worth it. Don't forget to check out the video of the whole performance. Highly entertaining stuff.