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USA Edition | Today Is Sunday, March 21, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Sunday, March 21, 2010 |
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| Assessing L’Affaire Couric | « Scan Content In The Order It Was Published » | Elizabeth Edwards: Inside The News | |
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New York – The absence of responsible adults in the major network news divisions has serious implications for a nation largely uninformed about what matters most in their lives. Journalism depends on two major foundations: (1) protection under the U.S. Constitution, and (2) credibility amongst the American citizenry.
Even as the implied Fourth Estate protections of the constitution continue to be under pressure in the courts, a growing segment of journalistic institutions seem more than willing to trade their credibility for convenience, money, or political advantage. 
Network news operations ration news content to avoid boring the non-news viewers sought out by advertisers.
Those who see this as censorship have a point, but a small one. Broadcast is inherently a balancing act between available content and available time. Now, it’s widely reported that the networks are failing to provide adult supervision or skeptical editing. Radio news, on the other hand, continues to be credible — especially in the public sector. National Public Radio has grown in both stature and listenership in recent years. But, for some inexplicable reason, television news, especially at the local level, has largely abandoned journalistic rights and privileges earned by four generations of hard-working men and women.
If there are bad guys in television news today their names are Sean McManus, Steve Capus and David Westin, for they are the men to whom the nation’s most valuable broadcast news organizations were entrusted. They have failed their news divisions and flagrantly defrauded the viewing public. There are many legitimate problems in broadcast news today. The major networks are in big trouble — mostly at their own hands.
One might wonder if closing down the network news programs (the remainder of their activities are far more profitable) might not be a good thing. Not because the nation doesn’t need network television news coverage, but because what is offered as network news content demeans journalism and robs the public of critically important content.
Neither the public, nor the profession, have known the full extent of the spreading cancer that has all but killed legitimate, credible and probative network news. Now, the nation’s most prestigious television news program has turned the spotlight into the smarmy world of commercial TV news. What it reveals about the abdication of editorial responsibility at all the major networks is evidence of corruption on a massive scale.
Last week, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer broke a significant story about the Pentagon knowingly and intentionally directing network news coverage concerning events in the middle east. To some degree the bad guys were the retired military officers who accepted employment with the major networks. As was all too common today, the retired generals and admirals were double-dipping — being paid well by the networks to give insight and background on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq while also working for the Pentagon.
Based on the NewsHour reports, it seems the double-dipping generals have made fools of themselves. As bad as their complicity may seem, the damage done by the retired generals is made small by the damage done to honest and responsible journalism by network news departments that fail even the most generous measures of integrity. In terms of damage to the profession, it makes little difference if the corrupt television news executives knowingly went along with the Pentagon, or were simply so inept as to be swindled by them. Either way, this great and largely ignorant nation is put at risk by the freaks and the clowns.
