Journalism's Fall

I can't help but think back to a paper I wrote my freshman year in journalism class commending W&B for their superior investigative reporting skills without a raw sense of anguish at my naivete. Sure, they brought down the President by exposing the "truth" to the public and government. They sent the country into turmoil, which hadn't even began to recover from the Vietnam crisis, and shook it's faith in the oval office. But they were not detectives, they were scavengers. They fiendishly scrounged off the stupidity of those who were too inept to understand the value in keeping your mouth shut. And their "investigative reporting skills" do not differ or amount to much more than that of a bulk magazine salesman.

Nixon did his best to protect those who were working on his behalf and to better his political career. He was simply taking care of his own. This is not to say Nixon was a great President. It wasn't by coincedence that he was crowned Tricky Dick. Nixon's inconsistencies in Vietnam screwed this country six ways from Sunday. However, morally, he maintained credibility. Nixon should be known as the man who went down without betraying those were loyal to him. And yet he met his political end at the hands of two who were only concerned with climbing the ladder to a Pulitzer, despite the guise of morality they published under.

Locke and Pope would be ashamed. Hearst, the founder of "yellow journalism", would be giddily watching his money pile up. The face of journalism has become uglier since this mid-70s phenomenon. Now journalists and "truth seekers" seem to carry a sense of childish vindication in their articles. They think the system is always broken, the good-natured senator is a criminal because he enjoys women and booze. Let me save you a headline story, everyone has flaws and skeletons in their closet. It is not the job of journalists to habitually beat this point into the ground over and over again. Do your job; report the facts as they are relevant to the public and do not speculate. If this is too great a burden, change your name to Sam Spade, get a detective's license, and stop the charade.

Traditional print is on the way out - losing to weblogs, regular television news is passed over for the Colbert Report and comedians - mainstream media is dead. Mainstream journalism's fall is a good thing - maybe now we can actually get closer to some untempered truth.