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USA Edition | Today Is Saturday, March 20, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Saturday, March 20, 2010 |
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America For Sale
American Journalism has been caught in a maelstrom of change seemingly beyond its ability to cope, or adjust. It has been severely crippled by a failed political ideology that wanted to believe that human weaknesses and proclivities no longer required the stabilizing hand of government.
In the last decade the overall quality of journalism has diminished in order to shore up media profitability. There remain pockets of journalist excellence, even today. The problem isn’t that good journalism has entirely gone away, only that it appears to be doing so. What’s troubling, and portends a considerable threat to the American nation, is that relevant, probative and credible journalism is freedom’s safety valve. Without credible journalism, comprised equally of journalistic inquiry and public trust, government goes unchallenged. One only need look at the last quarter century to see how failed journalism contributed to the collapse of failed institutions.
President Richard Nixon Addressing The Nation, 1974
To some degree, how one evaluates the overall quality of journalism depends on how one perceives journalistic endeavor. Is it a self-contained island of activity, or is it merely one element within the media in which it lives? While Newsroom Magazine approaches issues of journalistic quality without regard to the publishing media, not everyone agrees with this approach due to the inherent problems and advantages media brings to any journalistic endeavor. While we respect the journalism-media view, our purview is necessarily wider in the sense that American journalism is a critical and inherent part of governance.
Nixon's Presidential Resignation Letter
American Journalism has been caught in a maelstrom of change seemingly beyond its ability to cope, or adjust. It has been severely crippled by a failed political ideology that wanted to believe that human weaknesses and proclivities no longer required the stabilizing hand of government. Absent governance our banks turned into irresponsible loan sharks, our capitalist system into a seemingly endless quagmire of fraud and deceit, and our media establishment into money pumps absent responsibility or adult supervision. Thus followed a redefinition of media that endangers nearly every newspaper and threatens the financial stability of long established wire services.
The disestablishment of the Fourth Estate has produced copious wealth for the few at immense cost to the many. Some thirty years after abdicating our responsibilities to one another, the disestablishment of the Fourth Estate continues in the name of cost-cutting and shifting media opportunities. The result has been an era of journalistic regression that has watered down, or conveniently abandoned ethical foundations and reportorial standards. Today, what matters most is made to compete with that’s most interesting or entertaining for column space or airtime.
The progress of journalistic regression, and its consequences, have been sparsely reported by news organizations. What some journalists describe as the effective collapse of probative, responsible and credible journalism has gone largely unnoticed by the general public both at home and abroad. The impact of journalistic regression in the United States have been a government not held accountable for its actions, personal freedoms diminished for political expediency, political polarization as a means of concealment, and a nation largely ignorant about what matters most.
Whom Amongst Us?
If you’re one of the fearful, among the laid off, or one of millions of other unemployed Americans today, re-examine the image atop this Conversation With America.
Is there a Katharine Graham today? Someone willing to bet her company and personal fortune for the rights of her countrymen to know what the United states Government is doing in their name?
Are there energetic young reporters the equal of Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward? Probative, investigative journalists free to devote their guile and energies to seek truths skillfully concealed from public view? Are there men and women journalists you know who are steeped in Fourth Estate values and guided by professional ethics and journalistic standards?
Are there men of courage today — men like the FBI’s Mark Felt, willing to risk their lives, careers and livelihoods in service to their country?
If there are none among us today, your freedoms are at risk, your country in danger, and your future uncertain.
At its best, journalism serves as our nation’s constitutional safety valve. But, in the absence of responsible journalists, news gathering and reporting is easily corrupted, drained of credibility and made flaccid by impotence from within. In the last three decades the quality of journalistic expression in this nation has regressed. For some, this regression has reduced the Honorable Profession to little more than tabloidism, entertainment features, gossip mongering and handsome presenters.
Such pronouncements may properly describe the overall health of Fourth Estate journalism — but they wrongly branding what remains of journalistic excellence. while it may not be commonplace today, journalistic excellence still exists. There are many responsible journalists still amongst us — although far too many of them are finding themselves underemployed, or unemployed due to layoffs, cutbacks, downsizing and cost containment.
In the real world, journalists are not the culprits in the corruption of credible journalism — but they have gone along with the destruction of their profession in ways similar to the Hungarian German Jews marched off to Bergen-Belsen by German invaders in 1943. The similarity is stark in the sense that personal fear produces journalistic compliance when rebellion was warranted.
Where were the responsible journalists? How did those who had a powerful voice choose to say nothing? To go along? To see their profession slowly dismantled, their peers put out on the street? Why has responsible journalism failed to report on its own demise? And why did those who worked in broadcast news participate in the systematic dismantlement of what was once the most powerful and persuasive and credible source of news in the history of the world?
Robert Butche
Publisher
Newsroom Magazine
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