“CEDARBURG, Wisc. — Hundreds of angry people in this small town outside Milwaukee taunted reporters and TV crews traveling with Sen. John McCain on Friday, chanting “Be fair!” and pointing fingers at a pack of journalists as they booed loudly.”–Washington Times, Sept 5th.
Isolated incident? Don’t bet on it. Americans are disgusted with the Fourth Estate, maybe more so now than at any other time in modern history. And despite what many people in the field believe, from network executives in corporate suites to reporters in the hinterlands, the anger “we the people” are demonstrating is not merely about politics. The people in Wisconsin weren’t shouting, “stop beating up on John McCain or Sarah Palin.” They shouted two words: “be fair.”
Reality: journalistic integrity is dead. It was killed by one of the oldest truisms of humanity: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It is almost impossible to remember a time when the mainstream media functioned the way it was intended to function: as an IMPARTIAL OBSERVER of news. For many of today’s “journalists”–suffused with a self-aggrandizing sense of “social justice”–maintaining observer status has left them wanting. They are no longer content merely to report the news. They now feel a compulsion to create it, and shape it to their liking. Once, facts were used to support opinion. Now it’s the other way around: newsmakers start with a preconceived agenda, and then find “facts” to support it. Those facts which do not are ignored–or suppressed.
Human beings intuitively know when someone has violated their trust. They know when they’re being lied to, or manipulated. And Americans, perhaps more than any other people on earth, have this innate sense of fairness, a fairness which transcends partisan politics, race, gender, religion and every other arena in which our media has sought to pit one group of Americans against the other.
Bottom line: Americans don’t know who to trust anymore. Does anyone still remember that the primary reason for a free media as envisioned by the Founding Fathers was to protect us from the abuse of power by government?
Who protects us from an abusive media?
I have no idea exactly what they teach in journalism schools, but it’s impossible to believe ethics and integrity are critical parts of the curriculums. If there is to be a sea change in the profession, it must start there. Until then, media will careen us from one rumor to the next, one manufactured crisis to another. They will deliberately stoke anger, fear and divisiveness among us as a means of enhancing their power.
The demonstration in Cedarburg, Wisc. will not be the last. There is a tsunami of resentment and anger building among all Americans, regardless of our personal affiliations.
We’re all “mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
atahlert@comcast.net
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