Wonderful Memorial Day post! What a different nation we would be if we took time to pause and reflect, more often. Sad that we can't even manage it on official days set aside for such things.
Hedges waits until the middle of the last chapter to bring up one of the problems that allows so many of the others he covers to fester under the surface...our failing press:
"Television journalism is largely a farce. Celebrity reporters, masquerading as journalists, make millions a year and give a platform to the powerful and the famous so they can spin, equivocate, and lie. sitting in a studio, putting on makeup, and chatting with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or Lawrence Summers has little to do with journalism. If you are a true journalist, you should worry if you make $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that serving the powerful is a primary part of his calling. Those in power fear and dislike journalists--and they should." (169)
Anyone else hear Don Henley lyrics?
The Founding Fathers were aware of how indispensable a free press was going to be in the republic. They were specific about guaranteeing the liberty of it. They could not however, have imagined the scene Hedges describes. They could not have dreamed that the press would willingly hand off their ability and obligation to be a thorn in the flesh of those in power.
In the last chapter of Dan Rather's new book, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News he describes what he has seen happen:
"The profit imperative also means that news has become conflated with entertainment. News is no longer what it was when I started: a public service. Today, few people talk about broadcast news in any other way than as a profit ratings getter and profit center. And as a network profit center, there is now every expectation that network news divisions will generate ratings and hence revenue, just like any drama or sitcom or sporting event--which is why the pope took a backseat to a tennis match, and why we now have four talking heads in a studio shouting at one another instead of four overseas bureaus covering real news."
While I was setting Hedges aside to find out what Rather had to say on this subject--what did I find? That ONE paragraph later, while lamenting the death of newspapers (just last week the Times Picayune announced it was going to a 3 day publication week) Rather is QUOTING HEDGES :)
"Chris Hedges has written a riveting essay on the subject. Entitled 'Gone With the Papers,' he highlights what is at stake:
"We are losing a peculiar culture and ethic. This loss is impoverishing our civil discourse and leaving us less and less connected to the city, the nation, and the world around us. The death of newsprint represents the end of an era. And news gathering will not be replaced by the internet.
Journalism, at least on the large scale of old newsrooms is no longer commercially viable. Reporting is time consuming and labor-intensive. It requires going out and talking to people. It means doing this every day. It means looking constantly for sources, tips, leads, documents, informants, whistleblowers, new facts and information, untold stories and news. Reporters often spend days finding little or nothing of significance. The work can be tedious and is expensive...
The steady decline of the news business means we are plunging larger and larger parts of our society into dark holes and opening up greater opportunities for unchecked corruption, disinformation of power...A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth, and when civic discourse is grounded in verifiable fact."
Read the essay in its entirety here.
“I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.”
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