My turn to rant! An open letter to the MSM from one of its children:

DFW

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Sun Nov-18-07 12:39 PM
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My turn to rant! An open letter to the MSM from one of its children:

Before I get started: Fox please note--this is not directed at you. You make no attempt at disguising that you are an organization somewhere between a Republican Party propaganda ministry and an entertainment conglomerate, and when your �news� director, Nixon �Dirty Tricks Team� alumnus Roger Ailes, spelled out in an interview, �we have an agenda,� you made it plain to all who would listen (there were precious few who did, I know) that being objective was NOT one of your objectives. This is directed at those who still claim to be serious journalists, and therefore is not directed at any of your employees or commentators.

Dallas, Texas/D�sseldorf, Germany, November 18, 2007

To the Mainstream Media:

Hi guys. I�ll get right to the point:

In the words of Franz Zappa, �Suzy Creamcheese, what�s got into ya?�

This is not entirely a rhetorical question.

Cards on the table, first off. I�m not a total stranger looking in from the outside. You see, I�m one of your children. My father was a one man Washington correspondent from what might be termed a one horse town. He was sent to D.C. in 1950 as a bold experiment, and remained there all his fifty years of professional life, going from complete greenhorn to one of the most respected members of the Washington print press. You even elected him President of the Gridiron Club. In other words, he was not just one of you, but someone you all agreed was one of the best of you. Those of you who were around ten years ago still remember him as a fair and thorough journalist. I�m not speculating, here. Many of the faces we still see in print and on TV these days have told me so personally. He was immortalized into the Congressional Record by both the Right (Rep. Gerry Solomon, R-NY) and left (Sen. Pat Moynihan, D-NY). I grew up accompanying him to Capitol Hill and the White House. I was there in our living room when you, Senators, Congressmen, and other Washington types came over to the house to chat, on or off the record.

Dad always had a great time at his job, often getting frustrated with idiocy on the part of politicians, often with opinions he didn�t agree with on the op-ed pages. But it wasn�t until 1998, two years before his death, that he started to despair that members of his own profession, the real reporters, had completely lost it, totally forgotten the meaning and purpose of their profession. When the impeachment and trial of Bill Clinton was underway, there were plenty of world-shaking events happening: the containment of the horrors of the conflict in the Balkans, the saber-rattling coming from Iraq, the overheating economy and subsequent "dot.com" investment bubble. What did the majority of his colleagues focus on? Monica, Monica, Monica. He thought you guys had lost both your way and your minds. Granted, he was my Dad, but I still think he was right as rain. It never occurred to him that a huge number of you might have been bought off. That just wasn�t part of his repertoire. It didn�t happen in the world of the Columbia Journalism class of 1947.

Things change, obviously. Journalistic independence is no longer a given. Reporters are no longer guided by the likes of Scotty Reston and Ben Bradlee. These days, their marching orders come from the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his sons�corporate manipulators, rather than professional journalists in their own right. Stories are checked for correct (spelled �r-i-g-h-t-w-i-n-g�) slant rather than for accuracy. None of this bothers you guys? What happened? Did it happen so gradually that you didn�t notice what was becoming of you? Or was the money just too good? Even adjusted for inflation, it�s a safe bet that Katie Couric is making an obscene number of multiples of what Walter Cronkite did. One more time: what�s got into ya?

I�m raising the point because, except for Bush�s 26% of hardcore ostriches, even the people who used to really believe the packaged crap you churn out these days are finally waking up. It is only a question of time before more of our politicians treat you like French President Sarkozy correctly treated CBS�s Lesley Stahl, i.e. �If you want a serious interview, I�m available. If you want to score points with irrelevant questions about my personal life, this interview is over. Au revoir.� What I can�t understand is that you seem to be the last to be figuring this out. Oh, I know, a few of those heavy eyelids are finally beginning to open. Otherwise, Kos wouldn�t have been invited to be a columnist at Newsweek. Yeah, they have Karl Rove, now, too, but Rove�s drivel will be so predictable, and so similar to all the right wing garbage we have been served by you up to now, that his ramblings won�t be any more informative (or interesting) than one more drop of guano on a Gal�pagos island.

The warning signs are increasing in their blatancy, and you aren�t paying attention. The fact that there is a whole blogosphere out there (not just DU and Kos, but a whole battery of points of view, and way more than just Drudge, NewsMax and e-versions of National Hate Radio) doesn�t seem to have dawned on most of you, nor does the reason for their followings (i.e. you are not doing your jobs).

The biggest applause at the Wolf Blitzer Comedy Hour, also labeled as the last Democratic �debate,� came when Blitzer asked Dennis Kucinich a question that started with �you alone voted against the Patriot Act� and Kucinich broke in, retorting �That�s because I read it.� You should have at least gotten an inkling of what was going on. This was not a tiny blinking light on your dashboard indicating you needed oil. This was smoke and flames coming from under your hood indicating you need a new vehicle, and rather quickly. I would have thought you might have gotten the hint. Apparently not.

Get back, Jo-Jo, get back to where you once belonged. REPORT the news, don�t make it yourselves. Don�t tell me it�s a lost art. I know the rules just from having a father who followed them, and I�m not a journalist. Ten years isn�t such a long time that it has become a lost art to objectively report what is important to the country, rather than to the political leanings of some guys in the corporate boardroom. It HAS to somehow be good business to be legitimate journalists rather than paid propagandists. Just because you didn�t have to take some sort of Hippocratic oath, doesn�t mean you have no responsibility to those who read or hear you. Come to think of it, maybe journalism schools should institute this?

Just because we don�t jump up and cheer every time you do your jobs correctly, that doesn�t mean we don�t appreciate it. We don�t jump up and cheer every time an Agriculture Department inspector stops a shipment of contaminated meat from reaching a Safeway shelf, either, but we sure appreciate it. He�s doing his job.

We�d greatly appreciate it if, at long last, you got back to doing yours.

Thanks for listening, and no, don�t worry, I�m not holding my breath.

Your VERY sincerely,

Your DFW