The earth is shaking. Do you feel it?
It’s not an earthquake. It’s not that climactic blast of coital bliss. It’s Joseph Pulitzer rolling over in his grave.
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| Joseph Pulitzer |
“A free press should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare.”
This year, 2012, is an election year. In November, America’s populace will determine who will be the Commander in Chief for the next four years. You would hope that the members of that populace would use logic and knowledge to make the best choice on who will lead the country toward a prosperous future while correcting problems of the past.
I don’t see that happening.
Americans of voting age cannot form a legitimate opinion because their primary source of education – the televised media – sides with one of America’s two political parties, supports the demagogues who are part of the privileged class, and has a slanted vision of progress that is devoted to their futures, not to the public welfare.
It really hurts me to type that because journalism – true journalism – has been a lifelong passion of mine. Journalism fed my family and me for more than 20 years. Being a journalist drove me, excited me, and challenged me. And though I am no longer affiliated with a television, radio or print news organization, I consider myself a journalist. I’m not always proud to say that anymore.
It is not coincidence that the polarizing of Americans coincides with the polarizing of the media. Because of the sensory overload of our current age, Americans do not dedicate the effort to fully learn about the public issues and the various ideas to solve the problems. Instead they set their televisions to Fox News or MSNBC and let the opinions of biased anchors and programmers fill the air with ambient noise. Soak within that toxic stew long enough and the toxins will invade your body.
Fox News unabashedly sides with the far right conservative Republican ideology while MSNBC stakes claim to the equally far left liberal Democratic philosophy. Each are examples of the Communist way of spreading propaganda – tell the people who they will like, who they will hate, what they will do and what they better not do.
True journalism shows the viewer, listener or reader both sides of a dispute and believes that each person is smart enough to form his or her own opinion. And in the process of presenting that information, true journalism does not denigrate or interrupt the presenter of the information because the presentation is contrary to the journalist’s personal point of view.
The people vying to become the President of the United States of America – a misnomer since very little is united around America these days – should be telling us how they can contribute to the welfare and future of the nation, not spend all their time telling us how “horrible” the other guy is. These people are in the middle of a year-long job interview. I’ve gone through job interviews, as I’m sure you have, and I’ve led job interviews, and in all instances the best candidate for the job proved why he or she is the best, not because they were “less horrible” than the other candidates.
Almost 45 years ago – April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated – Robert F. Kennedy, who himself was running for president, told supporters in Indianapolis:
“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”
None of the people currently campaigning to be the next president is smarter or more clairvoyant than the other, but each has ideas that, put together with other ideas, will move the country forward. The Founding Fathers combined the positive contributions of each man to “form a more perfect union.”
It is long past due time that the current Fathers – and especially the current journalists – start contributing instead of dividing.
