As a sometime member of the "press," I'm constantly amazed at the ill will and outright contempt with which journalists are regarded these days. Friends of long and short standing love to leap on the faults of what they call "the media," blaming them or us for almost everything from the common cold to the nation's alleged moral decline.
It wasn't always this way, or else in old age my memory is playing tricks on me.
The worst canard nonmembers of the Fourth Estate tend to lay in our respective laps is that there is some kind of a conspiracy on the part of newspapers, radio and television to deceive, hide or otherwise prevent the public from knowing "what's really going on." It's always seemed to me that the principal job of the media is, as the old slogan used to say, "Get it first, but first get it right." My colleagues in whatever branch of reporting the news they inhabit aren't interested in not reporting what's happening. If anything, it seems to me they are overzealous in reporting everything that's taking place, whether it is really important or not.
The nonpress also complains a lot about how the media constantly report bad news, not the good things of life, as if concentrating on these items would somehow make the world a better place in which to live. Sort of like putting one's head in the sand or looking at the world through rose-colored glasses or whatever. But then this complaint has been around for a long time. Most news isn't good because this best of all possible worlds is often a flawed place in which to live.
I do admit that in recent years the media, especially television, have often launched into a sharklike feeding frenzy--the O.J. Simpson trial is a good example--but as others have often admonished, no one has to read about such things if they don't want to do so. I have successfully avoided a lot of Mr. Simpson's long story. I even managed not to watch the delivery of the verdict, although I admit I was in the minority.
Cases like O.J. Simpson's acquire their place because some part of the public psyche likes to read about such things. Why they do is a mystery to me, or maybe it is the mystery of such a case that lures everyone to pursue it. Anyway, "the media" aren't guilty of foisting this on a gullible public. The public consumes it with relish. If they didn't, newspapers wouldn't sell and people wouldn't watch TV.
As a sometime member of the media, I do admit there are things wrong with it, but, not unnaturally, I tend to think most of them are wrong with television. Maybe that's because I've never been a member of that branch of reporting. TV reporters are too closely associated with show business, it seems to me. By the nature of the medium in which they work, they are performers first and reporters second. They tend willingly or unwillingly to acquire star status, to become recognizable public faces, seemingly as important as the story they are covering, and sometimes more important.
Sometimes they seem to believe this themselves, which is unfortunate. It's the story and not the messenger who carries it that ought to be paramount.
It's unfair to put Dan Rather or Peter Jennings in a casual jacket in front of the 1989 Cypress freeway earthquake disaster and contend they know more about the story than anyone else, even though they and their producers would like to believe it. A local reporter can do as well or better. Alas, the faces of national media celebrities have come to lend credence to what they are saying. We've seen them so often (every night, in fact) that we tend to think what they are saying has to be the last word when in truth it isn't.
But the pencil-press, as we used to call them, although now I suppose they ought to be the computer press, has faults, too. Ever since the days of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, some pencil-press people have come to believe every story is Watergate. Watergates come along once a century, maybe even less often. Most news is dull and fleeting, not something that's going to shake the nation. Reporting it is interesting, but it's never going to be a Pulitzer Prize-winner.
So where does that leave the media? Well, I tend to believe they're as fallible as those who read, view or listen to them. I've always thought the press, the media or whatever we call them is a mirror, a reflection of the society which they observe and report upon. The press and its brethren are as praiseworthy or as faulty as the place from which they spring.
Because we don't like to see ourselves as we are, that's often not acceptable as a judgment of the media, but that's where it is, it seems to me. There is one other thing: In a free society where the press is essential not only to freedom of expression, but also to the health of government, no one has yet devised a better way to keep a check on the public officials who sometimes tend to stray from their path of public service into private greed, malpractice or deception.
Only the media can do this. They may not always do it well. They may bang a few wrong knuckles in the process. But they must and do continue to do it, thank God. What we need to worry about as far as the media are concerned is when they stop doing this. Then we'll be in real trouble.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Saratoga News
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, February 12, 1997.
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