An open letter to the press - Democratic Underground

dsc

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Fri Jul-08-05 11:09 PM
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An open letter to the press

Those with great power have an awesome responsibility.

In nearly every state in the union, Judith Miller would have the power not to answer Fitzgeralds questions. Over 40 states have journalistic shield laws which prevent prosecutors and other officials from compelling the names of sources. In many cases this power borders on the absolute. The people with a priviledge like this are very small in number. Among professions only priests, doctors, and phyciatrists join journalists if having the priviledge. Among personal relationships only married couples have an analogous priviledge. In all of these cases society has determined that the value of preserving those relationships outweighs the value in evidence that might come from breaching those priviledges.

That puts journalists in pretty exclusive company. Teachers, for instance, must report any sign of drug use by students (even small amounts of pot or tobacco) despite the fact that doing so may deny that student a college education. The founders wanted you to have this power. They understood the vital role that a free press plays.

In addition to that priviledge, jounalists in the US have some of the strongest protections against libel suits by public figures, even accidental ones, that have ever existed. Not only must you be wrong and harm the reputation of the public figure, but you have to have acted with either malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Both are standards that are so hard to prove that one would be hard pressed to find many cases of sucessful libel suits of major news outlets by politicians. That is as it should be.

But there is a underlying reason for you having these priviledges. In return you are supposed to be akin to a fourth branch of government. You are supposed to be a final check on the unbridaled power of the other branches. You are failing miserably in your mission. Instead of serving as a break on this administration's power you are serving as an amplifier. Judith Miller is in jail tonight not to protect a whistle blower who stood up to the Bush administration but to protect a Bush administration hatchet man who went after a whistle blower who stood up to the Bush administration.

In the summer preceeding September 11th, the press was obsessed with a missing young woman, the creepy Congressman who had dated her, and sharks. After September 11th we were told that things would change. We were now a serious people, who were going to have a serious press. So what happened?

We just had a Presidential campaign. If one read only the corporate press one would have thought that the only issues were, the war in Iraq, terrorism, gay marriage, what some wacked out liars said about Kerry's Vietnam service, and the economy. Some of those were, indeed, serious issues. Others were out and out distractions.

What about the deficit? Did either candidate have a plan that added up to eliminate or at least reduce the deficit, don't ask the media they have no idea. Did either candidate have any plan to insure the uninsured, don't ask the media they have no idea. Did either candidate have a plan to help stop or at least fix the damage caused by outsourcing, don't ask the media they have no idea. You in the press were far more interested in men marrying men and swift boat liars, than in any of the above issues.

Now we have another terrorist attack. What were the media discussing in the lead up to it? Why a missing young woman and sharks, of course. Sadly for the media there was no creepy Congressman to make the missing young woman case more alluring, but there was a bunch of black folks to make look evil or incompetent or both so it was a bit of a wash.

This country now has three 24 hour a day news networks and major hour long news shows on its three regular networks at least twice a week. Yet, where did a person have to go to find out about living on poverty level wages? FX and MTV. No, I am not making that up. FX had an episode on 30 days about living on the minimum wage for 30 days and MTV had a True Life episode about three teenagers living in poverty. Both were well done and very illuminating. Both would have made a wonderful Dateline or 20/20 but 20/20 was too busy trashing Matthew Sheppard and Dateline was too busy investigating the book of Revelation to promote a miniseries.

You have failed the nation. In a year which has seen concrete evidence that the President exaggerated intelligence to goad the country into war, a war which has killed over 1700 Americans and an unknown number, but at least in the tens of thousands, of Iraqis, we have seen more coverage of the spat between Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields over psychiastry. In a year which has seen the unmasking of the supposedly wartime secure White House letting a tax dodging, prostitute unfettered access to the White House press room while simultaniously condemning gays, we have seen coverage of the totally unique phenomina of the chair of the Democratic party saying bad things about Republicans (most of which were true by the way).

I honestly can't recall the lasttime I watched the likes of 20/20 or Dateline for anything like news value. Frankly, I haven't watched them much at all. Journalists have an important job. When you don't do your jobs, people die in wars that shouldn't have been faught. When you don't do your jobs, people wind up thinking that Saddam was behind September 11th. When you don't do your jobs, Presidents can lie with impunity. From the day this administration took over, you have served as an amplifier for its message. You let them trash former Clinton and Gore staffers for supposedly having trashed the White House, when we later found out (thanks to Bob Barr) that it was a lie. You let them lead us into war on the wing of lies, you let them smear McCain, Cleland, and Kerry (war vets one and all) while you protected their draft dodging hides.

It is not your job to treat the interesting as if it is important but to treat the important as if it is interesting. Instead of regaling us with tales of missing women in Aruba, you should be telling us tales of people who can't get medical care due to lack of insurance. Instead of telling us about sharks in Florida, you should be telling us about memos out of Britain.

In short, do your jobs. No one else can.