Keller @ Large: When Media Critics Cross The Line

BOSTON (CBS) - If you've ever seen the classic movie "A League of Their Own" about the first female professional baseball league, perhaps you remember the moment where Tom Hanks as the crusty manager is yelling at one of his players, and as she starts to cry he yells: "There's no crying in baseball."

That's the way I feel about criticism of the media. I don't care to hear any hand-wringing about it.

We dish it out, every day in a multitude of ways, and can't expect people to always like it or take it sitting down.

When we get facts wrong or behave inappropriately, we deserve to get scorched.

But I'm going to make an exception to my own rule because of a couple of stories in the last few days that suggest some media critics have lost control of their senses, if they had any to begin with.

Maybe you saw the live CNN interview Tuesday from a shelter in Houston with a mother and her two children who had just been rescued. The mom had obviously agreed to be interviewed, it wasn't some hit-and-run situation, but halfway through she suddenly snapped and started cursing at the reporter.

This prompted hack Trump mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway to tweet that the obviously-stressed woman had "shamed" CNN for somehow forcing the interview on her, a flagrant lie apparent to any decent person watching.

And speaking of indecent people, how about the 69-percent of Republicans in a Fox News poll who said they think the news media "poses a greater threat to the US" than white supremacists?

That is just plain sick, and irredeemably stupid.

Media people are imperfect, as are we all, and not above criticism.

But this type of vitriol says much more about those who spew it than it does about their targets.