Are Only the Media at Fault?

Way back in 1970 when Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley were household names for anchoring the nightly news on the three major media broadcast companies, Barbara Walters and Connie Chung had yet to crack the glass ceiling into a prominent position in the world of TV. Cable news hadn't yet been born.

Hold on a minute -- 1970 was 54 years ago. OMG, I'm so old!!! When did that happen? Hmm, while I ponder that, here's the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say. Congrats to you if the names I've mentioned are familiar.

Anyway, 1970 was an era in which the gold standard for journalism required that only objective, verifiable truth got on the air. Both broadcast and print reporters were required to consult three different sources before their stories had enough credence to be disseminated to the public.

I got my start in journalism that year. As a sophomore college student at the time, I switched my major from political science to journalism and began as a features and news reporter. The following year I took over as managing editor of the campus newspaper. I loved the writing and editing for their left brain challenges of making sense with words and giving a logical progression of storytelling.

Almost more satisfying was the design and layout of each printed page -- a right brain type of visual creativity. Something about those functions felt like fulfilling a mission. I was hooked.

Several twists of fate later I found myself living near a couple of Air Force bases overseas where I volunteered to work as a reporter before eventually getting hired by the military to write newspaper and magazine stories, and even radio. Later I worked as a reporter for a small town newspaper and wrote and published a newsletter for parents as well as one for an alternative community center.

I detail these early career experiences to make this point: the news, like the law, is supposed to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. At least, that's what I was taught. These days I cringe at how the media has wandered so far from the gold standard.

More and more today I see the media being blamed for the plethora of conspiracy theories fomenting much of the culture of grievance and violence. Bolstered by personal emotion, unfounded conjecture, and uninformed, uneducated opinion, truth is too often elusive to the public as much as to seasoned anchors and reporters.

Journalists and everyone who must chime in on everything, I beg you, if you don't know something for sure, if you don't have at least three sources you can trust for the information you report, then just tell us the truth hasn't yet been uncovered. Tell us who is obstructing the truth, but don't make stuff up.

Are the appetites for the shock value and the politics of disinformation to blame? Are the authentic media merely doing their job? Has the need for tabloid entertainment and commercial ratings become more important than responsible journalism?

I'm sad to observe the false tales of the naive, ill-informed, dishonest or gullible wagging the media. But aren't we the public culpable to the extent that we are too often titillated by untruths, by score-keeping with the lies told about those we have decided are the enemy, and our failure to teach and exercise solid critical thinking?

It's up to us to hold the media accountable, along with the politicians and pundits, so-called "social influencers" and others on social media. Even if you are, like me, too unable to join a protest march, we can at least counter lies with researched, verified truth.