Obama Asks To Reform Journalism
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Even though he didn't name names, did he really need to?
"In an era where the news that city hall on fire can sweep around the world at the speed of the Internet, would (Cronkite) still have called to double check?" Mr. Obama asked.
Fresh from his August bruising at the hands of the death panel battalion, the president can be excused for looking back more fondly on an earlier era in journalism, one in which Uncle Walter was voted the most trusted man in America. Unlike those proverbial days of yore, the contemporary journalism profession is supposedly chockablock with shoot-from-the-hip artists who too often post first and ask questions later. Unfortunately, the president raised that question, but then chose not to examine why that is so. Instead, he sufficed with making an invidious comparison between that (again, assumed) golden age and the new world order where technology turns everyone into the publisher of their very own Daily Me.
"Would (Cronkite) have been able to cut through the murky noise of the blogs and the tweets and the sound bites to shine the bright light on substance?" the president wanted to know. "Would he still offer the perspective that we value. Would he have been able to remain a singular figure in an age of dwindling attention spans and omnipresent media?:
That was an easy setup for as practiced a rhetorician as Barack Obama.
"The simple values Walter Cronkite set out in pursuit of, to seek the truth, to keep us honest, to explore our world the best he could - they are as vital today as they ever were...and if we choose to live up to Walter's example, if we realize that the kind of journalism he embodied will not simply rekindle itself as part of a natural cycle but will come alive only if we stand up and demand it, and resolve to value it once again, then I'm convinced that the choice between progress and profit is a false one and the golden days of journalism still lie ahead."
I'm curious how this will play. To be sure, the speech paid warm homage to one of the most respected U.S. journalists of the post-World War 2 era. But under the heading of no good deed ever goes unpunished, conservative critics may rightly (no pun intended) bridle at the president's implied suggestion that journalism needs reforming. In other words, did Congress add the title of Lecturer-in-Chief to the president's job description nobody was looking?
Another point. Let's more closely weigh the claim that journalism was richer "back in the day." Yes, we had Woodward and Bernstein, but they were the exception, not the rule. The political elites often got away with a lot of nonsense that never made it into the papers. One also should ask whether all points of view were getting fairly aired. I grew up in the era when three television networks dominated the airwaves and a handful of ponderous establishment dailies told America what was important. To be sure, we're going through a sometimes rocky transition but that doesn't mean the same values represented by Walter Cronkite won't live on.
Here's a heretical thought: Maybe we're living through another golden age of journalism right now but just don't recognize it as yet. To be sure, the panoply of voices is greater than ever before. Admitedly, sorting through the chaff is not always easy. But that's a small price to pay.
What's more, the worry about quality getting sacrificed at the alter of sensationalism - especially in the emerging world of the Internet - applies both to left as well as right. Media baron Rupert Murdoch had something important to say about this in a speech last fall, where he faulted the response of some in the "established media" to the challenge posed by the Internet. His conclusion: "It's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers."
That's a worry for President Obama. And if Walter Cronkite were still around to weigh in on the topic, he'd make it unanimous.
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Why doesn't someone point to the fact that we the people are not interested in a health care package that our own representatives are unwilling to join...I will consider their bills if they switch to Medicare, and Social Security!
We need a movement to make these elected idiots wake up and see the way things are for us-the ones they dump these dumb laws on...I say let's make them downsize...fire 1/2 of House of Reps, Assembly, Congress, and the rest of these jerks, that are do not understand the situtation...put them on our plans and boy I bet we would see some action..if only I was younger I'd start a movement, to make them live like the rest of America...
We are going to have our children paying for all this junk for years, with no benefits, no retirement, and having to move to India or such in order to have a job..I think the next elections we should all write in "NONE OF THE ABOVE"
Today, TV news is not telling us about health insurance. I have yet to hear on story about the amount of money private health care industries "donate" to Congressmen. When congressmen go on TV attacking Obama's call for a public option, I have yet to hear one news broadcaster ask that Congressman how much he or she gets from health insurance companies or big pharma.
The public does not know that every time they pay for health insurance, they are also making a secret behind-the-back political campaign contribution to the likes of Mitch McConnel or Charles Grassley. And if you don't believe me, just go to Google Center for Responsive Politics and add the Congressman's name. You'll get all the information you need.
Most people don't even know that the health sector is the biggest campaign contributor to Charles Boustany whose supposed to deliver the rebuttal to Obama's speech. Nor does the public know that the infant mortality rate in Boustany's native state Louisiana is 3 times higher than the infant mortality rate of Sweden or France.*
This ignorance is because the media,especially TV news, are getting pay-offs from health insurance and pharmaceuticals.
I ventured behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War and discovered that no one believed the propaganda on the Communist=run news broadcastst. It's too bad people in this country aren't as bright as the people in Bulgaria.
*PS, I got this information from the 2009 CIA Fact Book and from Statesmaster.com. You can look it up yourself. My question - why don't I get that information from CBS news?