Photo: Display at Willmar MN Public Library about media and information literacy
Prior to Jan. 20, my daily routine included television newscasts, morning and evening. As a former journalist I enjoyed keeping up with the news. At breakfast the TV in our kitchen aired local and national news programs.
Since then, the TV now is often tuned to a program called “Create” on our local public television station, or “This Old House.” We still follow the news, reading it from credible online news sources. We subscribe to online versions of our local newspaper and the New York Times. (Our subscription to the Minnesota [formerly Minneapolis] Star Tribune has lapsed; so far I have failed to navigate the online renewal process.)
The change in news habits reflects comments we’ve heard from others. “I just can’t watch the news anymore.” The key word is watch. Reading the news usually has less emotional impact. And you can be more selective about what you read. You have more control and are better able to ascertain credibility.
If following the news is sometimes painful for readers, how must it be for journalists trying to cover the insanity emanating from the White House? Almost every day there is an outrage. I am thankful that I am no longer a daily newspaper editor who must decide the day’s news coverage, at least from the position of “objectivity.” Reporting both sides of the story is nearly impossible when the sides are not even in the same universe.
If you recall the term “Fourth Estate,” it once referred to the print news media. It is attributed to Edmund Burke about opening British parliamentary debate to the press in 1771. It acknowledged the power of the press alongside the first three “estates,” nobility, clergy, and commoners. The Irish-Anglo philosopher and statesman is said to be the founder of modern conservatism, which may be a bit ironic if you believe the news media are too liberal.
When I was a newspaper editor in the old days, we made a sincere attempt to seek balance in opinions expressed on the editorial page. Balance not among letters to the editor, but in the syndicated columns we offered. I sometimes cringed when I laid out the editorial page including columns by Cal Thomas.
In his Feb. 26 column, Cal Thomas blames FDR and the Democrats if our nation is heading for a constitutional crisis (which I believe possible). He quotes Thomas Jefferson (a slave owner) saying that all government should be tightly reined so that everyone has a chance to gather as much wealth as they can.
Thomas has made millions over the years saying essentially the same thing, bashing liberals and Democrats for whatever they happen to be doing at the time, with no supporting evidence, and then spewing the usual conservative line about small government and the right of people, the super-rich in particular, to do whatever they want.
In reality, the public looks to the government to provide the services that the private sector can’t or won’t provide. That explains the growth over the years of federal agencies, from health care, to the environment, fair trade, consumer protection, education, defense, pensions (Social Security), food security, and numerous others.
It is our God-given responsibility to take care of our neighbors in need. And why they are, in most cases, is not their fault. If you think that they are at fault, please read The Other America by Michael Harrington. Societies that care for the needy are the strongest and most prosperous overall.
Today, too many of the working and middle class have been brainwashed into believing that this social investment is some type of government overreach, when it actually exists to help and protect them from greedy billionaires. Much of this regulation grew out of the so-called Gilded Age when the super-rich did as they pleased and exploited the working class.
Political support for the role of government in actually nurturing the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution came from the Fourth Estate, a free and independent news media. It still exists, although much less powerful than before (see the post Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, Feb. 5).
Somewhere in the 1990s the term “Fifth Estate” arose. Online pundits, bloggers, and I would add, Fox, began to erode the power of the Fourth Estate, and its economic base, advertising. Has the Fourth Estate news media’s tenacious watchdog role being converted to lapdog? I hope not. I’m guessing that this will be addressed in a book that I am waiting to check out from the library.
At the town hall meeting reported in last week’s post, the man who organized it encouraged everyone to read How Democracies Die. One of my favorite news magazines, The Economist, says: “The most important book of the Trump era was not Bob Woodward’s Fear or Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury or any of the other bestselling exposes of the White House circus. Arguably it was a wonkish tome by two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a year into Donald Trump’s presidency.”
Since we already mentioned Fox I will add another book to the reading list, which I have read and highly recommend, Hoax, by Brian Stelter. It describes how Fox News, created by Roger Ailes in 1996, evolved from a news program to ‘state-supported TV’. Fox, particularly its talk show hosts, is a prime cause of the crisis we face today.
But there’s always hope.
My research into the Fourth Estate revealed two student newspapers by that name, Laguna Blanca High School in Santa Barbara, CA, and at George Mason University in Fairfax County, VA. Young children today and students will be the ones most affected, and in the greatest position to do something, about the political challenges we face today.
May they take up the banner (headline), which someday soon we hope to read, as it did in the May 6, 1945, New York Times, THE WAR … IS ENDED. And the good guys won.
