Mo [no blog or website; just fabulousness] sent me this excellent piece on Walter Cronkite and the state of “journalism” by Glenn Greenwald. I love it. I’ve always kind of suspected my outrage at what The News has become is one of those obsessions you share with just a handful of other geeks scattered around the planet. Maybe not, though. Maybe there are many of us who hate it but just accept that there’s nothing to be done.
[When I think about this, the thing that always comes to mind is how, for so long, we never saw any of the coffins of service people as they were brought back to the US. The government didn’t want us to see them, so we didn’t see them. I always thought about what it would be like to be the photographer determined to get photos of those coffins at some point along the way, about making that your Purpose and about doing everything you could to photograph every single one without getting thrown in jail. Using high-tech stuff, disguises, assistants. Making it your one, single, driving goal to show the American public, in as graphic a way as you could manage, what was really going on.]
Why does the state of the news piss me off so much? I don’t have a degree in journalism, and I’ve never worked as a reporter. But I was on the newspaper staff in high school a zillion years ago, and I won some awards and crap—stuff that means nothing--EXCEPT: it means we were trained by people who cared about journalism and about the way the news was reported back in a time when it wasn’t a glamour job. The news anchors were all men, and there was no cutesiness or silliness. No cleavage. No hope that this job would lead to superstardom and movie contracts. We didn’t see reporters as celebrities but as workers—people who were doing the hard work and asking the hard questions and pissing people off by digging and coming back again and again until they got Answers. We learned stuff. I believed I was going to be a reporter, and I cared about this stuff.
I remember one story we did during my oh-so-brief stint as editor—amazing! I have a memory!—about selling alcohol to 18 year olds. It was legal then—had just become legal, I think—and we were checking with local stores to find out which ones really checked ages and which ones would sell to pretty much anyone who looked like they were in high school. It pissed people off, but it was fun: it was great fun, in fact, digging and trying to find out things people didn’t want you to know.
And that was how we saw it, back then: finding out stuff people didn’t want you to know and passing that information on to the people who needed to know it. Greenwald is exactly right about that: it doesn’t happen any more. Reporters now are just the mouthpieces of the people in power—the government and the corporations that prop it up.
I’m not a journalist. I don’t dig for information that people don’t want me to know. I don’t play Gotcha with the people I interview. I love what I do and wouldn’t trade it for any other job, but sometimes I can still imagine myself as a journalist: a cross between Cronkite and Bob Woodward and Harriet the Spy. It still seems like it would be a lot of fun.
Of course, I’m way too old and not nearly cute enough. Plus that whole cleavage thang. Too bad for me. Too bad for Harriet. Too bad for the news.
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making do
2 days ago
8 comments:
thank you, rice ;)
i WAS a journalism major, back when i was young and thin and my whole life was ahead of me. my journalism instructors, for the most part, were pretty wonderful. one in particular was very cronkite-ish. you could tell that, for him, the story was everything. let me tell you, that certainly inspired his students.
over the years, as i read newspapers, news magazines, news sites, blogs, opinion sites, i tend to just shake my head at the whole desrepair of journalism and wonder at what happened to the likes of Cronkite, Halberstam, Woodward and Berstein. i wonder if watergate would have even made headlines in the current environment. think how much honest-to-God journalism has meant to our political history and weep over its current state of affairs.
I have been told that capitalists will sell you the rope you use to hang them, but don't believe it. It is my theory that Corporate America has been one of the driving forces in turning news and journalism into infotainment. Look at good old Rupert Murdoch and his brand Fox (or should we say Faux) News. GE owns NBC.
If you want to find out the stuff they don't want you to know, check out different resources. Amy Goodman does a wonderful job on Democracy Now and you can get that as a podcast. She broadcasts 5 days a week. There are a bunch of good print Magazines including The Progressive, The Nation and Orion.
If you want to DIY the Congressional Record can provide interesting insights.
Apathy and indifference are powerful allies of the status quo.
I'm not a journalist and have no training as one, but like to consider myself as someone that didn't fall off the turnip truck just yesterday.
Mom was a journalist, before it was a celebrity job. She was in her 40's and 50's first a photographer at the local newspaper then on statewide t.v. At home the evening news trumped all entertainment shows when there used to be a difference. I miss getting information from the news.
bravo Rice! I too am sickened by the cookie cutter news. I think watching the real graphic news/body bags, the whole ugly war scene coming out of Vietnam back in the 60's set my anti war mode for life. As it should have. As it should be now for all of humanity. Not the selective news that we are spoon fed so that the masses don't get the "wrong idea".
The mistrust that settles in my gut is hard to stomach sometimes but worse is the seeing the ones who don't understand or care to think that our news is incredibly warped. To see the pure @#$% sensationalism that seems to sweep across the country. The garbage that the masses latch onto. The importance of the ratings over finding the real truth.
My solution is to limit my exposure to the crap because it just pisses me off so much. Create art and do right in my life.
Cronkite I am sure was as disgusted with the current "events"
as some of us are. We can only go to the REAL sources of journalism
like Amy Goodwin and some of the publications like The Progressive.
Support these sources if you can.
And turn off miss cleavage and
glamour boy on the "news" team.
It's the only path we have.
I was waiting for you to get to the crux of the problem and you finally did when you mentioned the news reported being what the big corp that owns so so many news papers, stations, networks etc wants us to say. Then there is the whole deal about certain government mucky mucks who are no longer in power thank God, (not sorry Texas)that surpressed whatever they felt was none of our business.
Our political view as so similar. You carry on quite a bit, but I usually agree with what you say.
For the past several years, I've put most journalists on the same level as the politicians - maybe I'm just being cynical, but there you go. It's gotten to the point where I pretty much boycott the news because, as you noted, it's very rare that someone actually digs deep to find out the real stuff.
I try to tell myself that my view from the inside (at least, up until Spring, 2007) does not allow me to view this topic objectively.
But, the heck with it ... I don't agree with you, Rice, or those who posted the derogatory comments. I have known too many people of quality and upright character, skill and dedication, to sit back while you paint us all with a broad and disdainful brush.
No, I never reached the level of a Cronkite ... sorry about that. But he - and others - set standards to which the rest of us aspired ... and in that aspiration, we became better journalists, and better people.
And whether those of you on the outside like it or not, those of us on the inside accomplished something, and still do ... sometimes in spite of ourselves, but there it is nonetheless. We got the word out, raised awareness, sometimes raised a little outrage, and sometimes raised a little joy. Long hours and short pay, but also A LOT of satisfaction.
I spent thirty years in the business ... New Mexico, California and Texas, full-time and part time ... print, radio, television and internet ... I wouldn't trade it, or the people with whom I worked, for anything.
Rice, thanks for the opportunity to vent ... I miss iced coffee and great conversation with you and Earl at the southside Starbucks!
jeff, i certainly wouldn't include you--and other reporters i have known--but that might just prove my point. i have known and worked with some very good reporters who really believed in their work. but none of them went on to Celebrity Journalist status--not willing to say "yes, sir" enough, maybe? the ones i remember are ones who rocked the boat--and so, sadly, didn't last a whole career's worth.
(and then there are those who plague the MRT today--one in particular--who needs a LOT of remedial work.)
glad you used the opportunity to vent! venting is good!
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