Going after the answers

[Political Waves]

I'm on the last week of my stay here on the West Coast and now I'm hustling to say goodbye to all those who I so happily greeted just a few weeks ago. I hear reports that I'm needed back in the Pea Patch but it's hard to let go of the option of waking up to dear faces and sunny climes. Oh well. Such is life.

 

On such a short leash, there won't be much analysis today. Just a point made, both satirical and seriously, regarding the press and its influence. In my stay here, I've run into many differing opinions and some of them are just painful -- the kind of crap you can hear coming after the first couple of words and that you psychically insulate yourself against as they drone on, lest you "get some on you." I always walk away wondering what infotainment hack gave them THAT load of non-sense.

 

This post speaks to that nonsense filtered through a press that has been bought and sold too often to mention. It features one of my favorite faux-journo's, Jon Stewart, and another journo who continued to do his best even after the Republican machine diced him into a gazillion pieces during Bush's reign. Me? I figure anyone the Pubs come after with that amount of vitriol is a hero.

 

So here's a reflection of journalism, 2011. It seems to me that we're finally asking the right questions -- now we need to remember our national tradition of going after answers, and have the courage to reestablish it for this new century. I declare fixing this problem with the press to be our NUMBER ONE PRIORITY on our To Do list in 2012. You know -- the TRUTH will set us free! You with me??

 

Jude

 

 

 

Stewart Rips Into Fox News for Its Crusade Against Obama's So-Called "Godless" Turkey-Day Address

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/740771/stewart_rips_into_fox_news_for_its_crusade_against_obama%27s_so-called_%22godless%22_turkey-day_address/#paragraph3

 

 

And, We Have Gotten Used to It

Dan Rather, Reader Supported News

28 November, 2011

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/8633-and-we-have-gotten-used-to-it

 

On November 22, Dan Rather received the Committee to Protect Journalists' Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for 2011 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. What follows is the speech he gave upon accepting the prestigious award. -- JPS/RSN

 

One of Bud Benjamin's dreams was to expand the CBS Evening News to a full hour. And Bud wasn't thinking of filling it with helicopter shots, celebrity gossip and punditry. He imagined an entire hour brimming with investigative reporting, exposés and dispatches from around the world.

 

It was a different time in journalism. A time when professional duty was patriotic, and the freedom of the press motivated and inspired newsrooms. I know it is hard to believe - but it's true - newsrooms were not supposed to turn a profit. Frankly, news was considered an acceptable loss on the balance sheet.

 

To keep our FCC license and the public trust, we had to use the public's airwaves in the public interest. Yes, that's a whole lot of "public." But that's the way it was. It's the way it should be again.

 

Today, how we look and how we "present" information has become far more important than how we gather it. It's upside down and backwards. And, the worst part is ... we have gotten used to it.

 

The caretakers of the Fourth Estate have, at times, left the building unattended. Public interest be damned.

 

It was Thomas Jefferson who noted in 1799 that, "Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light."

 

Jefferson trusted the press - not to stir up heat, but to deliver insight.

 

Of course freedom of the press and of speech both come with pitfalls. People can peddle opinions as if they were facts. Those armed with the big, expensive megaphones drown out those blowing whistles.

 

But now, we see our fellow citizens taking to the streets. And, that my friends, is our cue to get back to work. As the People of our nation begin rising up, they expect the business of news to be about inquiry and accountability.

 

And, luckily for us, we can still do that ... but it may not be within the confines of big corporate media. As you know, we are living in an age when big money owns everything ... including the news.

 

That cash bought a lot of silence for a long time. Enough time for unchecked power to get this country tangled into messes all around the world. We all know that money talks. But, so do the people. They tire of conflicts at home and abroad ... conflicts that avert our eyes from the corruption and callowness that does little more than spill our blood and misspend our treasure.

 

"We had fed the heart on fantasies," wrote William Butler Yeats, "the heart's grown brutal from the fare."

 

In other words, we have gotten used to it.

 

What happens to a country when the press helps divide people into Us and Them? When it fans the flames of conflict and calls it reporting?

 

We need to restore, at some point, the teaching of the craft of journalism. The best way to protect journalists is to teach them how to do journalism and, therefore, protect themselves from becoming irrelevant.

 

I am reminded of the finest speech I ever heard on the subject of television journalism. It was given by Ed Murrow in 1958.

 

Murrow said, "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But, it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends ... otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box."

 

Dear friends, we must untangle the wires from the lights. We must halt the steady decline of broadcast journalism and the endless compromises to the boardroom.

 

Some say it is too late. That Congress wrote our epitaph in 1996 when they all came together and passed the Telecommunications Deregulation Act. Since then, the lights in a box have gotten brighter and flashier ... but the truth dimmer and dimmer.

 

And ... we have gotten used to it.

 

The late, great Molly Ivins used to tell a story about what happens when fear grips a country. Molly liked to tell the story about her late friend, the celebrated Texas civil libertarian John Henry Faulk, who, as a boy of six, went with his seven-year-old friend, Boots Cooper, to rid the family henhouse of a harmless chicken snake. From its high perch, the boys found themselves eyeball to eyeball with the snake.

 

Growing up in Texas, it's not uncommon to see a chicken snake ... but being close enough to spit in the snake's eye must have been quite disconcerting.

 

As Molly would tell the story, the two boys ran out of the henhouse so fast they nearly tore off the henhouse door ... not to mention doing damage to themselves in the process. When Faulk's mother reminded the boys that chicken snakes are not dangerous, Boots Cooper responded, "Yes, ma'am, but some things will scare you so bad, you'll hurt yourself."

 

That is what we have been subject to as a country. We have been so afraid; so hell bent on destroying enemies ... both foreign and domestic ... we have hurt ourselves and our democracy.

 

You are probably asking yourself now what you should do.

 

Well, it may take courage.

 

There are so many wrongs to make right, it is going to get messier before it gets better.

 

We have to begin asking the hard questions once again.

 

We have to demand and earn back the respect that gave us the right to ask them.

 

We must protect whistleblowers by using our megaphones to make their risky admissions even louder.

 

We must demand access to all those risking their lives to challenge power.

 

We must refuse to simply read press releases and rely on official sources.

 

And we must begin to enforce our own professional code of ethics. Refuse to compromise. Going along to get along is getting us nowhere.

 

Tonight, if I can convince you of anything, it is to buck the current system. Remember anew that you are a public servant and your business is protecting the public from harm. Even if those doing harm also pay your salary.

 

To once again quote Ed Murrow, "There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference ... this weapon of television could be useful."

 

And wouldn't it be great if our country could get used to that. ++

 

 

“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.”

~ Barack Obama

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