Bad Journalism Is Destroying America
Some years ago, as a fledgling young reporter, I
became involved in numerous controversial stories that
make the blood race and the heart pound.
I remember a family that nearly died from carbon
monoxide seeping from an improperly connected chimney
pipe. I reported that the family returned to the
gas-filled home after the baby, the first to react to
the fumes, was turned away from the local hospital
emergency room. The family couldn't afford to pay. The
hospital administrator publicly attacked my story and
tried to get me fired. My editor stood behind me but I
was under the gun. A week later the hospital
administrator was fired and I received a letter of
apology from the president of the hospital board.
Then there was the time I found out about a secret
meeting of the county board of commissioners. The
district judge was trying to blackmail the board into
giving him a fat pay raise. He belonged to a state
board that funneled grant money into county coffers.
That crooked judge threatened to withhold the money if
he didn't get his raise. I got the story from a
protected source and reported it. The judge issued a
court order demanding that I reveal my source. I turned
the demand over to my editor, it went to my newspaper's
legal counsel, and we told the judge to go to hell. I
think I came close that day to going to jail, but it
was the judge who blinked first.
Those are just two of a long string of events that,
for me, made newspaper reporting the best job that
anybody could ever have. I remember jumping out of bed
in the morning, anxious to discover what each day would
bring.
Veteran journalist Henry Holcomb, a reporter for the
Philadelphia Inquirer and president of the Philadelphia
Newspaper Guild, recently gave a nifty description of
those times during a panel discussion in Washington,
D.C. Holcomb said that the newspaper's mission then was
to "report the truth and raise hell."
Indeed it was. And that is what we did.
But something has happened since those great days of
pure American journalism. Whatever it was, it crept up
on us like a slow and insidious cloud. Reporters
slipped away from those hot stories, stopped covering
government, instead wrote "feel good" puffy stories
about children, dogs and social problems, bored our
readers to tears, and helped bring about the
destruction of the American Republic.
At the risk of sounding like a braggart, I have to say
that I saw it happening and made an effort to stop it,
at least in my neck of the woods. I rebelled against
orders by editors half my age to stop covering county
and city government board meetings and to devote my
time writing feature stories and looking at "trends" in
local events. I knew that was wrong and I told them so.
I recall a "mandatory" staff meeting in which the news
staff was assembled in a conference room with the
editors and publisher to brainstorm ways to build
circulation. The suits in the room said they could not
understand why our readership was dropping even though
the population in our area was growing. My suggestion
that we go back to reporting real news was met with a
deafening silence.
It was not long after that, when I turned 55, that I
was forcefully nudged into early retirement. At least
from the big city newspapers. I have been writing for
the rebellious little weeklies, Internet sites and
country editors ever since.
Since my first "retirement" I have watched newspaper
circulation continue to decline. Public distrust of
news received from both the newspapers and television
media has risen. The advent of talk radio and the
Internet has changed the format for news reporting.
Conspiracy theories abound in every corner. Everybody
wants to know "the truth," but nobody knows exactly
what that elusive thing is or where to find it.
One of the problems is that major world events are
occurring now with such speed, and the stories are so
spectacular, that only the television, radio and
Internet newscasters can keep up with it via satellite
transmission. By the time the newspapers hit the street
at a certain hour every day, the news they contain is
already old. And when reporters aren't digging for
those real news reports, why bother paying the price of
all that paper?
My concern is that the national media, and local
television reporters, seem to be following the same old
formula that brought down the newspapers in my time.
They are taking government and corporate handouts, and
spending the rest of their time chasing fire trucks and
reporting fluff. Consequently, nobody really knows more
than some Washington press secretary, or corporate
executive allows us to know about any given subject.
The news is always brief and lacking depth.
There should be small wonder that the people are
suspicious. When things like the Enron scandal, the
Florida vote scandal, and the 911 attack occur, we
should be asking who knew what and when they knew it.
I maintain that America is no longer a Republic. That
is largely the result of an irresponsible media that
stopped being the watchdog of government. Instead of
the fearless reporting we saw for the last time in the
Nixon Watergate mess, when the Washington Post was
still a courageous mantel for journalism, everything is
now spoon fed to us. The news is so controlled
reporters can no longer go to the front lines to cover
a war.
We used to call the Communist Russia newspaper Pravda
a propaganda machine for government. I can say today
that Pravda, which can be found translated into English
on line, may be a better representation of journalism
today than most major newspapers in the United States.
I have found relevant stories in that paper, and posted
them on my web site. These same stories were ignored by
the American press.
How can the Bush Administration declare a war on Iraq,
for example, without someone in the media asking why?
Why aren't reporters asking why we had to kill so many
innocent people in Afghanistan in our effort to flush
out Osama bin Laden's al-Quida network? Why have we
apparently abandoned our efforts to find Bin Laden, if
he was really the mastermind behind the 9-11 attack?
Why was our last president chosen by the U. S. Supreme
Court? Why did Senator Paul Wellstone's plane, flown by
two experienced pilots, miss its approach to
Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport and plunge nose
first into the ground with both engines running?
Isn't anybody in the world of journalism asking
questions? Isn't anybody just a little bit suspicious?
Visit the author's web site at: perdurabo10.tripod.com
or contact him at: jdona999@bau-net.com
