There is a lot of talk in the blogs and mainstram press about the black eye CBS has gotten regarding it's coverage of the Texas Air National Guard memos. Journalistic integrity may seem like an oxymoron to some, getting the story right is their job, and we rightfully get upset when the botch it.
More disturbing, however, is a press which increasingly plays into the hands of the people they are ostensibly reporting on. Our current President is setting new records for the lowest number of press conferences, and the ones he does give are tightly orchestrated affairs in which "good" reporters are rewarded with cute nicknames and follow-up questions, while those annoying ones who ask the tough questions are ignored.
Bill Moyers has been in and around journalism for over 50 years. He has been a reporter, an anchor, and even served on the other side as LBJ's press secretary. On September 11, 2004 he
addressed a journalism conference and gave some much needed perspective:
As deplorable as was the betrayal of their craft by Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Jim Kelly, the greater offense was the seduction of mainstream media into helping the government dupe the public to support a war to disarm a dictator who was already disarmed. Now we are buying into the very paradigm of a "war on terror" that our government--with staggering banality, soaring hubris, and stunning bravado--employs to elicit public acquiescence while offering no criterion of success or failure, no knowledge of the cost, and no measure of democratic accountability.
Moyers also talks about how secretive the current administration is and why trading a little liberty and openness for security and secrecy is a losing proposition:
This "zeal for secrecy" I am talking about--and I have barely touched the surface--adds up to a victory for the terrorists. When they plunged those hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon three years ago this morning, they were out to hijack our Gross National Psychology. If they could fill our psyche with fear--as if the imagination of each one of us were Afghanistan and they were the Taliban--they could deprive us of the trust and confidence required for a free society to work. They could prevent us from ever again believing in a safe, decent or just world and from working to bring it about. By pillaging and plundering our peace of mind they could panic us into abandoning those unique freedoms--freedom of speech, freedom of the press--that constitute the ability of democracy to self-correct and turn the ship of state before it hits the iceberg.
Bill Moyers is retiring at the end of this year. His voice will certainly be missed. The speech linked above is excellent and I urge you to take 15 minutes out of your day to give it a read.