Media Culpa
It’s hard to imagine that anyone could behave worse than the presidential candidates and their cronies but if you need to feel better about the next president — whoever he will be — then you have but to turn on the television. From the antiques on the Sunday morning shows to the frenetic twits on the cable programs, we are being smarmed by incompetents who not only fail to understand the facts and provide essential perspective, they are actively generating malaise throughout the nation.
I worked with Sam Donaldson at ABC covering Watergate back in 1973, and almost thirty years later, he still hasn’t learned how to do television. I don’t know whether or not he’s terrified of the camera or just looks remarkably uncomfortable before it, but it’s difficult to understand how someone who presents so badly is still on the air. If he were a brilliant journalist, his weak presentation skills might be overlooked, but Donaldson — a decent thinker — is primarily on the air because of his combative style.
Donaldson and his sidekick Cokie Roberts are stars who sparkle but don’t shine. Not only are they actors with remarkably thin entertainment value, but they are walking through very important roles on a critical stage. Millions of people watch and listen to them, thinking that they are being informed, but they come away ignorant of the facts and contexts that would make them more effective citizens. That’s what news is supposed to do.
As unfortunate as is the failure of the networks to properly contextualize, the cable news channels plumb new depths of odious. Like the CNN flotsam who invites an audience to comment on events, and then admonishes them when they talk over each other, attempting to shame them for how they present themselves to the rest of the country. Well yes, they do appear loud and rude, but what would you expect when you put hot-tempered people together in front of a national audience.
Worse still is Brian Williams on MSNBC who adds new dimension to offensive. His ridiculous supra-insouciance must drive an audience of people wanting to feel better about themselves. He talks about a nation in chaos when according to a Newsweek poll, the vast majority of the American public say they are quite content to wait for the system to work. Williams suggests that the country is on the verge of collapse, which is not only wrong, it is insulting. To bolster his argument, he points to a Wall Street slide, demonstrating a breath-taking ignorance of the economy and market forces.
The reason why we are in this muddle — and that’s truly all this is — is that the news media have failed to do their job. For more than twenty years, they have spoon-fed us sizzle when we needed steak, and their reporting and our listening have badly corrupted the system. The now-seasoned practices of the networks and their lessers have delivered to us the deplorable choice of Bush-Lite versus The Wooden One. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could throw them all out and start over with intelligent leaders and quality journalists?
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.