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Maybe It's Time To Ask Ourselves If We're Part Of The Solution Or The Problem
So what did you do for your country today? Did you add to the confusion, or did you take the road less traveled?
Robert Butche
New York
Living In Troubled Times
Someone recently asked if I thought an article I wrote for the 2007 New Years Day celebration had made any difference.
“Say what?” I asked, perhaps more incredulously than I might have thought necessary given the questioner being a long time reader fully capable of finding fault and making his case.
“That’s a pretty big question, don’t you think?” I said, after a short pause.
“Do you remember what you wrote?” he asked.
“Of course not . . . ” I stammered, “that’s nearly four years ago.”
“Prescient,” he said as if lecturing a child.
“On what?” I demanded. “I’ve written a great deal — is this article something I messed up?”
“Better read it again,” he said. When he looked up he added, “I think you’ll like it. Sometimes you make your point clearly — and this was one of those times.”
“Far too few,” I muttered, writing down the date the article was published.
It was several days before the note came to my attention again. When it did, I opened Newsroom Magazine’s calendar pull-down to January, 2007.
“Wow,” I thought as the page unfurled. We had only just begun Newsroom Magazine in November of ought-six — January was only our second month online.
I moved the cursor to the number 1 on the January calendar and clicked on it.
Moments later the article was on the screen. It didn’t look like today’s materials, for this piece was among our first four or five articles.
Familiar Theme
What Did You Do For Your Country Today looked familiar but I had no memory of writing it.
I wrote the article before the mortgage-madness got out of hand, before the liquidity crisis, before the immense funding of projects overseas, before the Greek debt run-up, before Bear-Stearns, Lehman Brothers and TARP.
While the article didn’t address any of the problems by name, it did address the underlying cause: America was loosing its way then, even as it continues to do so today.
Journalism had already evolved from fidelity-to-fact to fidelity-to-earnings. Television news was far from its roots, deep in hucksterism, mindless conflict and happy talk.
Since writing this piece I’ve had the opportunity of raising some of its issues with other contributors — most notably Tony Koorlander in Britain and Gordon Shaffer in Colorado. It was Koorlander who abruptly said Newsroom had used America’s many freedoms well. Shaffer, who spent time in a German Prisoner Of War camp in 1944, argued that we had, at the very least, helped to make America, Britain and the world a better place.
“Maybe so,” I thought. Perhaps the fact that we’re still here serving up the same message of being responsible and accountable, the importance of fidelity-to-fact, and the critically important role journalist play in defining our world today, is the best evidence.
Anyway, our readers get to make the final judgment on whether we’ve lived up to our admonition to the new year of 2007 on that cold January morning so long ago.
Taking The Road Less Traveled
January 1, 2007
The America we live in today is a troubled place. We need to know one another better, just as we need to understand the changing world around us. This is the mission of journalists, always has been.
So what did you do for your country today? Did you add to the confusion, or did you take the road less traveled?
Four years of engagement with people in, out of, near, or angry about broadcast news, provides insight into the cleavage between traditional journalism and broadcast news. The people in broadcast news today are as good, as public spirited, and as talented as those gone before. Most, we are led to believe, are not happy in their work, many are ashamed of what their profession has become, and some, burnt-out and angry, leave the business every week.
Newscasts, both local and network, are little more than shadows of what they once were. All are prettier, filled with colorful video and decorated with far more interesting graphics. Glitz and happy talk are everywhere, in part to obscure the reality that the freaks and the clowns are in charge, while the proud journalists remain quiet, fail to take a stand, or willingly play their assigned role as entertainers. The feeling of being part of what’s great about America no longer fills America’s newsrooms. Nor the sense of accomplishment for having shed light, or revealed something important about our shared American experience.
Today, a dozen young, idealistic Americans died in Iraq. Perhaps one hundred others were wounded, lost limbs, or eyesight, or, for the moment, lost the will to live. These brave young people paid that price willingly to protect your freedom to express yourself, to report what’s important, to inform your countrymen about the dangerous world we live in.
So let me ask you a question: What use did you make of those freedoms today? What light did you shine on our national ignorance? What truth about the American Experience did you share? What risk did you take to make your community and your country a better place?
If not today, when?