Broadcast Journalism is Dead

Listen closely....Can you hear it?....That faint rumbling in the distance is the sound of Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid doing somersaults in their graves.

In 1981, when the Reagan administration gutted the FCC, one of the first casualties was TV news. Back in the day, when the people owned the airwaves, one of the prerequisites for owning a television or radio station was that an owner, by law, had to provide the community with news and information as a public service. If the news department operated at a loss (and most of them did) that was the price they had to pay. Keeping the public informed about breaking events and matters of public policy was the news division's reason for being. The most important thing for a functioning democracy is an informed and educated electorate. It was a good system and - with very few minor exceptions - it worked beautifully for almost forty years.

All of that is gone. Broadcast News today is a crucial profit center on most independently owned stations and national networks. The legendary producer Fred Friendly once made the observation that the job of a good journalist was not to give you the news you want to know, but to give you the news you need to know. Friendly never lived to see FOX News and it's probably just as well. One can only imagine how horrified he would have been by the 'round the clock coverage of the Paris Hilton affair that has been going on for at least a month. It is a certainty that he would have been embarrassed for the industry that he and Murrow literally invented - watching News organizations blowing their budgets on helicopters trailing the motorcade of a woman going to jail for less than a month on a DWI violation - a woman void of substance who is famous for doing absolutely nothing!

Forty-five years ago this month, Marilyn Monroe's life was unravelling (Marilyn, unlike Paris Hilton, was a woman who could boast more than a few major accomplishments during her short life). In the summer of 1962 her dependence on drugs was starting to take a noticeable toll on her health and sanity. In addition to that she had just been fired by the director of the movie she had been filming with Dean Martin (She would be dead in a little over a month). But almost half a century ago, if you knew any of this information about the troubled actress, you learned of it by reading gossipy fan magazines - not by watching NBC News. In 1962, that organization had more important things to relate to the public. At about the same time the Monroe saga was playing itself out, President Kennedy's FCC chairman, Newton Minnow, referred to television as "a vast wasteland". Like Fred Friendly, it's probably just as well that Mr. Minnow never lived to witness the spectacle called FOX News.

No question about it: the American people are a people distracted. The main-stream media (electronic and print), the so-called "fourth estate", has utterly failed in its obligation to keep the public informed. In the good old days, a vibrant and healthy press might very well have been able to expose this administration's lies regarding Iraq's mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction Program and at least a half a million human beings would still be walking this earth. In the good old days there was something that was known as the Fairness Doctrine which guaranteed by law that both sides of any issue would be given a fair hearing over the people's air. When Ronald Reagan did away with that rule, the rise of right wing dominated Hate Radio was the inevitable result. In the good old days there was a limit as to how many broadcast stations an individual or organization could legally own. Today we are bombarded by a Corporate Media which is trying to keep the American people stupid. They are succeeding.

It is worth noting that, in the run-up to the worst foreign policy blunder in American history - while the corporate media was banging the drums of war - the only news organizations that essentially got the story right (Knight-Ridder, for instance) were those which operated outside of the Washington Beltway mentality. Independent journalists like Bob Herbert, Greg Palast and the late, great Molly Ivins, who desperately tried to light tiny candles of reason in the dark night of mindless nationalism, were dismissed by the main stream media as "unpatriotic". Instead of paying attention to the criminal machinations of their government, the foolish American people were happily being spoon-fed near lethal doses of info-taining pornography by the likes of FOX News. Just look at the result....

Where have you gone, Walter Cronkite?

For democracy's sake, we should all be demanding re-regulation of the broadcast industry. De-regulation, the hallmark of the so-called "Reagan Revolution" - whether it be of the airwaves or of Corporate America - has been a catastrophic failure. It's time to take our country back.

On October 28, 1958, at a convention of broadcasters in Chicago, Illinois, Edward R. Murrow gave a speech which, in hindsight, seems prophetic. Speaking of television he said:

"This instrument can teach, it can entertain, yes it can even inspire. But it can do those things only to the extant that men and women are determined to use it towards those ends. Otherwise it's nothing more than wires and lights in a box".

Edward R. Murrow didn't live to see FOX News either.

Wow! Did you see what I just did? I used the words "Edward R. Murrow" and "FOX News" in the same sentence. I didn't even think that was possible!

Fortunately for all of us, Bill Moyers survives on PBS....

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY.
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:
Murrow: His Life and Times
by A.M. Sperber

Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism
by Don Edwards

Edward R. Murrow: An American Original
by Joseph E. Persico

SUGGESTED VIEWING:
Selling The War
Bill Moyers' Journal
Available from PBS Video