Carl Bernstein: Today's media; more gossip & trash than news

BBB

Right on the money. Thank you for this piece.

Blatham
Blatham, you can tell by now that I get really pissed off at amoral politicians, greedy CEOs, and other charlatans. But I get most angry at the Media, which is failing in its responsibility to the public in pursuit of $$$. I'm beginning to think the Media is at risk of losing its protective rights under the Constitution if it doesn't change and earn it by fulfilling the Founders' ideas of its purpose.

BBB

All of that is so true! I always wonder about bombarding the news stations with letters about this very thing. Maybe that would change something. I don't know how many times I'm watching the news and have to sit through some pointless banter between the reporters... I really don't like that. Its a waste of my time. And the news is hardly news.

Maybe I'll work on a letter

Re: Blatham


I don't think the founders had any particular concept of the media's "purpose". Newspapers of the day then were mostly very sectarian advocates of particular points of view - hardly 'fair and balanced' at all.

Why stop with "amoral politicians and greedy CEO"? How about extortionist labor unions demanding paid employment for their staff personnel (designating them as stewards) even though they do no work at all. How about tort lawvers who look for subtle violations of the exploding library of Federal regulations and use them in class action suits against hundreds of business, always on behalf of the supposed "victims", and who pocket the great majority of the money themselves - and in the process doing great harm to the public in medecine and other fields. How about the public educational establishment with its revolving door of employment between schoolsystems, the NEA, teachers unions and the publishers ot textbooks (a huge industry). I could go on - the list is very long.

Were newspapers/mags etc ever fair and balanced? I don't think so, and I don't think they're meant to be.

Look at the archives - reports of parties, and who showed up at political meetings drunk, and who was found to have paid off someone else. I don't expect balance - I expect to be able to read a variety of sources and pick out what really happened from in between the litter.

georgeob1 - is this really the case in the U.S. ? I know that this isn't permitted here. The union rep MUST work on the line/in the shop or s/he's out (of the union).

georgeob1
georgeob1, I won't respond to your comments about labor unions and their stewards because I don't want to embarass you about your obvious lack of factual knowledge of the subject.

BBB

Consenual Crimes Corrupt The Ffredom Of The Press
CONSENSUAL CRIMES CORRUPT THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
Copyright © 1996 Peter McWilliams & Prelude Press

"A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society."---WALTER LIPPMANN

A FREE PRESS, WHICH leads to an informed populace, is essential to liberty. As Thomas Jefferson put it,

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.

"The press" is an extremely broad term and includes all systems that make information available to people: newspapers, television, radio, books, lectures, movies, art, dance, telephone, cassettes, CDs, video discs, magazines, electronic bulletin boards, computer networks, billboards, video tapes, you name it. It's generally known as "the press" in our country because, when the founding fathers wrote freedom of the press into the Bill of Rights, the printing press was the most popular form of mass communication. Today we call it "the media."

All of the world's major religions, philosophies, schools of political thought, and systems of government were spread through writing. In fact, the spread of civilization, religion, and the written word occurred simultaneously, each dependent on the other. The written word inspired, and the inspiration was passed on to others through the written word. All of the great religions were based on a "book"?-a collection of writings?-even before there were books. The Egyptians had the Book of the Dead; the Hindus had the Upanishads; the Jews had the Torah; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey told of the Greek gods; and the writings of Zoro-aster, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Buddha, the Jewish prophets, and the Greek poets made the sixth century B.C. a remarkable century indeed. Without writing and the ability to circulate this writing (a "free press"), these traditions would have influenced very few and would probably be entirely forgotten today.

"A man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer."
ROBERT LYND

Christianity first spread due to the freedom-of-speech tradition of the Jewish synagogues: any adult Jewish male was free to have his say. Jesus (and, later, his disciples) used this freedom to spread his teachings. Although Jesus never published a word,variation of "Ain't nobody's business if she do."> selections of what he said were written down and circulated on scrolls. These "sayings" scrolls were very popular and, considering that each had to be copied by hand, they were what we would now call bestsellers?-sort of a Lord's Little Instruction Book.

"The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality;
and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty."
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

After the death of Jesus, the "quote books" continued to be popular and the letters (epistles) from various church fathers were copied, widely circulated, and studied. The surviving letters of Paul make up the majority of the New Testament. Thirty years or so after the death of Jesus, the sayings books were expanded by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and, later, John into the story of Jesus that we now know as the first four books of the New Testament. Four hundred years after the time of Christ, the Bible as we know it was compiled.

The Bible was to become the most banned book of all time. For centuries, reading the Bible was forbidden?-it was said that the ordinary person could not handle the power conveyed by direct contact with God's holy word. In fact, banning the book allowed religious and political leaders to manipulate the populace into submission, threatening eternal damnation for disobedience.

Gutenberg's decision to use the Bible in 1455 as the first book printed on his new press is portrayed by many as an act of great faith?-he was so much a man of God that he chose to print a holy book instead of a romance novel. It was, in fact, an act of rebellion?-a major statement for freedom of the press.

Prior to Gutenberg, all Bibles were copied by hand by monks in monasteries. The Catholic church had a monopoly on the production and distribution of Bibles. Not only were they very expensive, but their distribution was carefully regulated. Buying a Bible was part of a package deal: you usually had to build a chapel to house it and hire a priest (one who could read and write) to interpret it. Like buying a computer in the 1950s, it was a major commitment only a handful could afford.
Gutenberg changed that. His Bible was relatively cheap (by Bible standards of the day), and available to anyone who could pay the price. For the first time, the word of God could be read and studied without the permission or interpretation of the holy mother church. Some say that this one act of freedom of the press was the greatest single factor behind the Reformation. The Bible, religion, Christianity, and the world would never be the same.

"The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr."
MOHAMMED

In our own country one book, more than any other single cause, was responsible for the revolutionary war: Common Sense by Tom Paine. This book (more a pamphlet, actually) was published in January 1776. The mood at that time in the British colonies was to continue negotiations with the mother country. A war against king and crown?-the direct representatives of God on earth?-was still, for many, unthinkable. Common Sense changed that. It sold more than 500,000 copies within a few months?-that's one copy for every eight people living in the colonies. Certainly everyone who could read back then read it. It changed people's attitudes from placation to rebellion almost overnight.

In July of 1776, the moment the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, it was "off to the press." Copies were printed and reprinted throughout the colonies. A good number of the colonists had read and studied it by the time the official signing took place in early August. The document was translated and widely circulated throughout Europe, where the mere possession of it in some countries was punishable by death. The Declaration fulfilled its intended purpose, and a nation prepared for war.

"Whenever people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government."
THOMAS JEFFERSON

After United States Constitution was written in 1787, it had to be "sold" to the electorate. This was done through a series of eighty-five articles?-written primarily by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton?-printed in newspapers throughout the country. The articles are now collectively known as The Federalist or The Federalist Papers. Without these, it is doubtful that the radical experiment known as the United States ever would have happened. Clearly seeing the power of the press, the founding fathers guaranteed its complete freedom in the very first amendment they added to that Constitution.

Probably the most influential book of the entire 1800s was a novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. (The alternate title was Life Among the Lowly.) Published in 1852, it portrayed slaves not as chattel or animals, but as human beings, and (gasp!) portrayed their white owner, Simon Legree, as the villain. Talk about your book burnings in the South! Of the 300,000 copies sold during the first year, who knows how many were purchased in the South specifically for burning. The book and its 1853 follow-up collection of factual documents, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, swayed popular opinion in the North toward the abolition of slavery. Without these books, anti-slavery might never have been a major theme of the Civil War.

In 1906, a book by Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, took a hard look at the meat-packing industry in the United States. A novel filled with many frightening and disturbing facts, The Jungle changed the way all food products were processed and packaged in the United States, and made major strides toward the enactment of worker protection and child-labor laws.

Radio found its stride in the 1930s. Some say Franklin Delano Roosevelt literally talked the nation out of its depression. By the late 1930s, while storm clouds gathered over Europe (as the more dramatic histories of the day like to put it), the mood of the American people was fiercely isolationist. "No more European wars!" was the battle cry. And yet, Americans were gently prodded into taking sides by what they heard on the radio. The major protagonists in the "European War" were England and Germany. What we heard from Germany were the unintelligible sounds of a ranting lunatic followed by the lock-stepping masses shouting, "Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!" England, on the other hand, had the warm, gentle, sometimes roaring, sometimes humorous voice of Winston Churchill. Surely it would be okay to lend this nice man a few boats and lease him a few airplanes. And so, lend-lease was born, and the United States was no longer neutral.

"I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence."
EDWARD R. MURROW

On CBS Radio, Edward R. Murrow reported firsthand the devastation of German bombings on London during the blitz. This further tilted American sympathies toward the underdog, England. His voice did more to fight Hitler than probably any other. In 1954, he was to use television to take on yet another monster, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt. "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," said Murrow on that historic telecast. "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular." In both instances, he risked his life; in both instances, he won. (He lost the battle with cigarettes, however, dying of lung cancer in 1965.)

In our own time (well, I suppose that depends on when you were born, doesn't it??-in my own time, at any rate), we saw a president toppled by a couple of reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, who inspired thousands of young people to take up investigative journalism. Then, after Woodward and Bernstein were portrayed in the movies by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, tens of thousands applied to journalism schools.

"The media I've had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day."
MICHAEL DEAVER, Former top aide to President Reagan

Through the media we learn about our world, our life, medical breakthroughs, scientific advances, toppling regimes, the truth about history, useful news, trivial news, useful trivial news, good news, bad news?-news.

We rely on it, depend on its accuracy, and, if it turns out to be inaccurate, we expect another news organization to expose the expos. Freedom of the press is a fundamental right, up there with freedom of speech and freedom of and from religion. A free press is not a luxury; it's a necessity.

How do consensual crimes corrupt our free press? Several ways.

First, since committing a consensual crime is breaking the law and since breaking the law is news, reporters are often sent out looking for video on drug busts, hookers, or stories on who is sleeping with whom and whether they're married to someone else. In the end, none of this has much to do with our lives (certainly not in the way that murderers, rapists, robbers, polluters, price-fixers, and bribe-takers do). So?-like the police, courts, and prisons?-the reporters' time and the media's space are overburdened with fluff. And not very interesting fluff at that. (You've seen one drug bust on TV, you've seen 'em all.)"you'd think America was populated solely by naked women and cinema stars."> There's plenty of international tension, domestic strife, real crime, corruption, and consumer activism to keep every reporter and his or her place of reporting busy, productive, highly rated, and of service to the community. There might even be a little time to dig up some good news.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . .it expects what never was
and never will be."
THOMAS JEFFERSON - 1816

Second, since consensual crimes are not based on hurting others but on religious interpretations by a handful of moralists, some journalists have been turned (some willingly, some not) into professional gossips and busybodies. Gossip is fine, gossip is entertaining, but it belongs on Entertainment Tonight and best-seller lists, not the network evening newscasts. "The things most people want to know about," wrote George Bernard Shaw, "are usually none of their business." Did Gary Hart really deserve to lose all of his political credibility because he took a boat ride with a young beauty? Mr. Hart's wife did not object; his ocean-going companion did not object; one must assume Mr. Hart himself did not object. To quote a television commercial of roughly that same time frame: "Where's the beef?"think that commercial happened at about the same time as Gary Hart's aborted presidential campaign. I cannot be sure. History for me is broken into four phases: (1) before I was born, (2) from the time of my birth until now, (3) now, and (4) has it happened yet? I do know that both Gary Hart's being caught in adultery?-not quite in the act, but at least in the yacht?-and that dear lady asking "Where's the beef?" happened some time during Phase 2.> Was this one seagoing sexual misadventure really sufficient grounds to completely ignore everything political about him, everything this man stood for, spent a lifetime building, and was doing a fairly good job bringing to the arena of public discussion? Gary Hart was sacrificed to a group of yapping moralists who claim that "an adulterer" is not fit to run for president. The yapping was served up by a "free" press bound by the chains of delivering late-breaking scandals with photos, video, and sound bites if at all possible. And what did the American people get in exchange? A truly dull campaign: Dukakis versus Reagan. Yawn. As Jay Leno observed, "Dukakis is Greek for Mondale."

"The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists."
TOM STOPPARD

Third, just as when cops need some easy collars and round up some consensual criminals, so too, reporters?-when there's dead air to fill or an article to embellish?-go out and round up some consensual crime stories. Need some quick video? Take a female reporter, put her in some fishnet stockings and a dress cut low enough to reveal her journalistic integrity, have her meander the sidewalk with the streetwalkers, and follow her with a hidden camera. (The camera can be hidden in a van marked ACTION NEWS with a little satellite dish on top and you'll still get good video?-men are terribly unobservant of all but one thing when their testosterone is raging.) If you really want ratings, put a male reporter in the same costume and situation.

Finally, as with police, journalists should regain the respect they are entitled to. Reporting a lot of "trash for cash" has tarnished the good name of reportage. Remember when Walter Cronkite, as the anchor of an evening newscast, was considered "the most trusted man in America"? Why not return to those thrilling days of yesteryear? It wasn't just Walter Cronkite; Huntley and Brinkley were well respected. Brinkley's still at it, saying wonderfully honest things, such as "The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were." There are, of course, other contemporary examples: Hugh Downs, Larry King, John Chancellor, and Bill Moyers.

The press not only cheapens itself by playing tattletale and reporting the consensual exploits of others; it also "eats its young" by reporting on the consensual activities of its own. An absurd example of the latter involves an attractive female "reporter" who invited Larry King up to her hotel room, which just happened to have more hidden cameras than Allen Funt's bathroom. Well, the tape went on and on and on, and Mr. King made nary an improper move. But, dull as it was, they showed the tape anyway. After all, Larry King is a star; there's air time to fill; and, even if he didn't do anything, it will make a great teaser: "Larry King follows our reporter up to her hotel room! What happens then? Tune in tonight and find out!" (Although I don't remember the name of the show, why do I have the sneaking suspicion it was on Fox? "All the networks are struggling now with their desire to put on live executions, if they could, to get the ratings," said Gary David Goldberg; "I think the difference is that Fox would put on naked live executions.")

"Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon."
OSCAR WILDE

We're entitled to a free press, and the press is entitled to be free from rumor-mongering and reporting on the latest scandal from Gossip Central.

Re: georgeob1


Please don't restrain yourself. I doubt that I will be embarassed.

I have managed and led companies employing thousands of union employees, all operating under various Collective Bargaining Agreements. I know what union stewards do and I know the difference between the number required and the numbers they usually attempt to negotiate, and, as well, the union (staff) employees they often attempt to force on employers. I have met and negotiated with numerous local union officials and the Presidents, legal staffs and organizers of several national and international unions, Including Laborers, Operating Engineers, Building Trades, and Steelworkers (now almagalmated with the mechanics union). I have overseen the negotiation of at least five long term collective bargaining agreements with the Buildings Trade Unions, The Steelworkers Union, the Laborers Union and other combinations of the Metal Trades.

I have also negotiated disputes between different unions for jurisdiction among various classes of employees in large Federal Government facilities, operated by companies I managed, and have gotten to know up close the politics of Union Locals and the usually timid, feckless ( and occasionally corrupt) government labor officials who allow these messes to develop.

I do indeed know whereof I speak. I didn't have the bad manners to question your competence in the very broad issues you raised - you did that. However, now that the question has been raised, the only remaining question is, do you know what you were so archly talking about?

georgeob1
georgeob1, how about 35 years of labor union work?

I might add that in addition to representing employees against their anti-union employers, I also sat on the other side of the table representing management associated with my corporate responsibility via board election and/or avocation involvement for small groups and over 1,200 employees.

I've represented people ranging from office clerks to physicians and dentists. I was successful and respected no matter which side of the table I represented.

I'm also a certified mediator-arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association successfully handling a large variety of cases, some of which became well-known case studies for training purposes.

I would never have made the kind of degrogatory statements you made about working people. SHAME!

BBB

I made no derogatory statements about working people: none whatever. Read the posts. (We had an acronym in the Naval Aviation for one who didn't get his facts right and was wrong a lot --- WEFT.)

I did make a reference to "extortionist labor unions" with respect to their bargaining tactics. My reference there is to things I have directly, and repeatedly, observed at the bargaining table. (You may also wish to refresh yourself with some of the felony charges against the leaders of the Laborers Union, and, of course the recent furor over Bob Georgine's antics in the AFL/CIO insurance stock scam.) You may also be interested in a read concerning the recent plea bargaining of the past President of the Washington Teacher's union (plus two deputies) all of whom copped pleas for extorting over six million dollars from the local union over the past five years. The national union explained its failure to ever audit the books of the local during the last eight years (despite affirmations in both the union charter and the contract with the School District that it would do so annually) by asserting there was no binding legal requirement for such audits.

The point is in my original question - Why stop with "amoral politicians and greedy CEOs"? This point still stands, though your ill-considered rebuke and evasive defense do not.

georgeob1
georgeob1, your remarks certainly were derogatory against working people. Who do you think make up labor unions? Working people or fence posts? I would have ignored your biased remarks had it been for such an offensive statement.

I'm amused that you want to start comparing your version of bad apples with the corporate bad apples examples I could list. Enron is only a start. I won't engage in mud throwing with you by listing the greed and crimes of the corporate world, I'm sure you are well aware of them, but apparently wish them not mentioned here in your attempt to paint working people as the problem.

No group is more closely controlled and regulated by government and law than labor unions. One might wish that corporations might have the same restraints. Then so many millions of people might not have been hurt so bad financially during the last decade---and throughout capitalism (and royal) history.

I'd also like to return to the topic of this thread before you threw a verbal hand grenade into it.

BBB

I suppose the officials, organizers, and negotiators of Labor Unions are working people, but then so are CEOs and CFOs. Neither are working people in the sense in which I believe you used the term. Certainly you spared no criticism of CEOs. Your thought process here is - hard to follow logically.

Not all working people are members of labor unions. Indeed most aren't. Except for government workers, union membership has been declining for some years. Criticizing unions is not the same as criticizing working people, though unions usually style it that way.

One would have to look very hard to find examples of labor unions that have constructively aided the productivity and health of the companies that employ them - except by occasionally yielding to the necessity of relaxing a bit the generally obstructionist work rules they work so hard to promote. That is merely an unpleasant fact.

Of course unions are regulated. The National Labor Relations Act gives them monopoly power in certain labor markets. No company enjoys such protections. I think you know little about the legal requirements that publically traded corporations must meet.

georgeob1
georgeob1, I know quite a bit about about labor law as it relates to employer-employee relations having been educated in it. As I informed you, I've represented both labor and management over the years, a perspective you appear to lack.

However, I see no point in continuing this debate because your's is a one-sided perspective bias that will produce nothing but heat, not enlightenment.

BBB

You started it badly and are ending it badly as well.

Georgeob 1
Georgeob 1, I didn't start the anti-union attack. I would rather end it than continue to give you a platform to spew offensive virilent anti-unionism and anti-worker rhetoric.

BBB

George, shouldn't you be arguing this in another thread? What do labor unions have to do with the media? Or are you deliberately trying to change the subject, as a polite version of an ad hominen attack?

On newspapers, Jefferson wrote: "I deplore, with you, the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity and mendacious spirit of those who write for them…are rapidly depraving the public taste, and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit, I agree with you…Both of our political parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in the same object - the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good… .One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other, the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time…will tell."

The conservative Federalist feared the ignorance of the people, while the liberal Democratic-Republicans, of which Jefferson is the Father of, feared the selfishness of rulers independent of them.

These fears, as well as the mendacious newspaper, are still very much alive and well.

George's anti-labor stance, i.e., the gall with which they demand to be respected and valued properly, reveals to us that George is in fact one of those conservative Federalists that fears the people having power.

Thanks George for the side-bar point in fact here. You may have thought to throw off the subject under discussion, but you in fact helped illuminate it, well, a little bit anyway, which I am sure was not your intention.

Georgeob1 exist on Abuzz.com as well, and he is definitely not a pleasant poster over there either. He is in fact, quite vile. This is not an ad hominen attack. It is the truth.

Umbagog
Umbagog, I fear the loss of Media independence and public common good advocacy as one of the greatest threats to democracy clearly evident. Only now is the Media beginning to have the courage to stand up to this presidency and search for the truth---just barely---after a shameful three years. I would feel this way without regard to the political party controlling the government.

The great public interest protectors, like the Washington Post during Watergate, have become political wimps of late. That's why I say the Post's investigative journalism torch has been passed to the Knight-Ridder reporters, who are one of the few main-stream news organizations doing really good investigative reporting.

BBB