Happy July 4th everyone! This weekend, while we're celebrating our Declaration of Independence, we've just witnessed another example of the failure of the American press. The Internet, cable, and network news, and the few print-periodicals-that-have-somehow-survived, have been churning with pieces about Rolling Stone's crack coverage of (now former) Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal's out-of-control attitude and actions, which, thankfully, got him fired. As Frank Rich so pointedly asked, where were the journalists whose beat this was? How did they miss this story that had to be staring them in the face?
My personal feeling is that the good general, having worked and politicked his way to the military top, knew exactly what he was doing spilling his guts to Rolling Stone's freelancer Michael Hastings. The general who "spent five years running the Pentagon's most secretive black ops" doesn't make a hair-brained mistake like this.
What was his point? I don't know, but I suspect it lies under the public's political radar, which is exactly where it will stay.
Of course, by now Americans should be used to our traditional press dropping critical balls. And "citizen journalism" has neither solved the problem nor served as a reliable backstop. There are pros and cons to the concept that someone writing something up and publishing it makes him or her a "journalist," citizen or not.
Labels are one of the new currencies of the Internet. Everyone is an "expert," a "consultant," a "brand," and credentials are not necessarily part of the "expert's" package. I am all for personal reinvention and having the courage to stick your neck out for whatever you want to do, but poor writing, bad information, and mass "expertise" is contributing to the dumbing down of our culture.
But I digress. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi scorched CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan's butt for saying that she thought "the reporter violated an 'unspoken agreement' that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter." What is up with her? Gigging another journalist because he was doing his job? Ms. Logan ought to be ashamed of herself. It is nothing but exceptionally refreshing to find a writer and a magazine willing to go against the corporate grain that has infected our traditional newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV news programs and basically neutered them, if not made them tools for disinformation.
No one wants to take responsibility anymore, and Washington D.C. is home to the worst of the lot. Journalists there become cozy in the town's power-crazed environment. They become part of it and eventually become part of the problem. It's the ultimate Insider's Club. New York is another example, with the crash and burning of Wall Street while the investment bankers played on.
We need to understand this point clearly: Power and greed are the root reasons our planet is embroiled in the mental, physical, and spiritual crises that rage seemingly everywhere. Global warming, the Gulf oil spill, the financial meltdown...I could go on and on. The only way to stop these disasters is for every single one of us to take responsibility--including journalists, who are supposed to be society's watch dogs.
Does anyone know when the American press failure began? I'm not sure, though it was painfully obvious during the run-up to George W. Bush's disastrous Iraq war that the press had bailed on reporting the real facts -- the truth -- of the situation. Instead, they heartily passed along the Bush party line.
What did and does this cost our democracy? Is this what our Founding Fathers intended with freedom of the press?
General McChrystal was trained on the highest levels to strategize, and I believe he carried out what he intended with that interview. What strategy does American journalism need in order to save itself?
Beth Arnold lives and writes in Paris. (She wishes she could get some good Southern barbecue on July 4th.) To see more of her work, go to www.betharnold.com.
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Amen sister! I'm a big fan of term limits for politicians. I believe this nation would be better served if the media organizations established term limits on those they allow to cover politics. Some new blood on the media front would be just as welcome as new blood among the politicans. Career pols breed career hacks. Time for some change we can truly believe in.
To get more accurate and comprehensive information, I rely increasingly upon foreign news sources. They're much more reliable, credible, and less controlled by special interests, reporting "just the facts."
In the internet age, the press needs to give its readership something that normal bloggers or citizen journalists can't -- in depth factual reporting with news not available to any schmoe surfing the internet. Stories gotten by interviews, digging for facts, etc. Too much news stops just after the headline -- doesn't answer the how or why.
The press also needs to make an effort not to be the corporate lackeys they are today. However, that trust can't be regained overnight and can only be regained by ongoing blunt truth-telling -- much like the Rolling Stone article.
After all that, will the public buy in to a changed press? Probably not in the numbers they buy into faux news or sensationalist news, but the press doesn't need the largest audience share -- only the notion that they reported the facts when they saw them as honestly as possible. Time will take care of the rest.
Years ago, I was at a Chris Matthews Town Hall meeting in Little Rock, Ar. when the news had broken about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky though Clinton hadn't come clean yet.
I was sick of hearing the national press go on and on about how politics were in Arkansas. I got up and told Matthews that it was 100 times worse in D.C. and he and all the other Washington journalists knew it. What B.S. And I didn't know what Clinton had or hadn't done but most of those guys screwed around, and he and all the other journalists knew that, too. (I'd worked in Washington and had powerful access to power. I'd seen exactly how it was.)
I said then that those D.C. journalists ought to have 6 months in Washington and then six months in the middle of the country somewhere.
They live in a "power" bubble.
Second, they should take every reporter in the country, wire them up like Alex in A Clockwork Orange and force them to watch endless Glenn Beck reruns while listening to Toby Keith until they are "cured."
Everyone in charge all the way to the top of these media corporations need to grow a spine and reduce their profits if that's what it takes to do the right thing for their country and the people in it. Take responsibility. The buck stops with them.
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Yesteryear's, journalists had more in common with the average Joe, Mary and Kelly. Not today, many Cable hosts pocket million annually. Even the lowly Tiki Barbar was said to have been paid 300K a year. Whose pocket are the Journalists going to protect? A person making 35K or those in 6 figures, you do the math.
Then came 9-11-2001. Fox was still lagging behind CNN. What did they do? In 2000 elections, try as they could, Bush being a cousin to RAiles, they tried to not to be seen as a partisan. After 9-11, they started flying the old glory, every TV/Cable joined. They became super patriots, MSM followed. 2009, they came out and declared themselves, the opposition. Case Closed.