Tom Brokaw seems to be embarking on a media tour to complain about the media and Internet.
During an appearance on Andrea Mitchell's Wednesday MSNBC show, Brokaw lamented the at-times hostile culture that pervades some corners of the web. This is by no means a new phenomenon, but Brokaw spoke feelingly about it nonetheless. In addition to arguing that his grandchildren's lives would "not be easy" because email lasts forever and can be monitored, he said:
And what troubles me a lot more with every passing day is the expansion of the blogosphere and the outrageous commentary now hidden behind pseudonyms of one kind or another. It’s been bad for some time. But now it’s become so vitriolic and scabrous and profane — and a lot of misogyny directed at women who are in public office. You read the worst kinds of things about them.
Later on Thursday, Brokaw took his sad-state-of-affairs message to "The Daily Show," where he criticized the media for engaging in speculation.
"When I was the White House correspondent during Watergate, that was the greatest Constitutional crisis in this country's history and it was a terribly demanding journalistic assignment," Brokaw said. "So I spent all day long trying to find out what was happening behind the scenes at the White House, how Congress and the country was reacting. I'd go on 'Nightly News' that night and at 7:00 p.m. I'd start working the phones again for the next morning's appearance on the 'Today' show. But now if I were there, they would hit a switch and at 7:00 p.m. Chris Matthews would be saying to me, 'But don't you think he's guilty? Don't you think we ought to just run him up to the gallows right now?'
Brokaw has spoken out against the media in the past and criticized the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner for trying to be a glitzy Hollywood-type party. "Why do we think to have a successful evening, you have to have Donald Trump as your guest of honor, for example, or Lindsay Lohan?” he asked
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