Anchors Away

 

If you’re sorry that Tom is gone and Dan is going, pshaw. They won’t be missed. They should take Peter with them. These three pretenders to serious journalism were the primary deliverers of news to America for almost a quarter-century. From the get-go, they have done a tragically poor job of keeping us informed.

Cowed by the Reaganistas with the charge that the media were liberal, they failed time and again to tell us the facts, in context, where we might have been aware enough to resolve the problems created by the people who have run our country into the ground.

They might have reported on the deepening corruption of special interests buying the Congress. They could told us about the failure of the CIA to garner intelligence. They should have told us that Reagan’s massive Pentagon spending -- $1.6 trillion -- not only jacked up our national debt to near-drowning levels but also bankrupted the Soviets so that their military and scientists sold off weaponry -- including chemical and nuclear -- to psychopaths.

Had they been doing their job, our news anchors would have explored why medical care was declining to the point where today we rank 32^nd in infant mortality.

Had their focus been on journalism instead of their pompous self-importance, they might have raised enough questions about why our public schools were being flushed into academic incompetence and prevented the virtual collapse of the world’s once-greatest education system.

Some suggest that the corporate powers-that-be sat on the anchors, preventing them from telling the whole truth. That’s just not true. These boys were simply too busy strutting their stuff. Not only did they insist that their names be part of the newscast titles, they even had themselves listed as Managing Editors of their broadcasts.

Twenty years ago Brokaw had an exclusive first interview with Mikhail Gorbachev. As they shook hands, the Soviet leader said he would like to make a brief statement. Brokaw said no. Who did he think he was to refuse this world leader? He played it as though he was representing the U.S. in a propaganda war. And this was in Moscow. Anyway, they sat down. Brokaw asked his first question. Gorbachev acknowledged the question and then delivered his statement, brief, gracious, appropriate.

Brokaw should have been fired on the plane ride home. He was to anchoring what John Kerry was to presidential campaigning.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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