Commentary on a free press
Don Tarbet
Catie Dean alertly noticed that the Lewiston Sun Journal had covered the rally
as a huge event, completely ignoring the fact that the only news was the failure
of fingerprinting supporters to attract backing. I went online, checked the
articles (there were
several related articles in which the PTA, etc, statements [the same ones we heard at
the Armory on Feb 10] were transformed into fresh and exciting news).
A sharp exchange of emails followed resulting in my being offered the chance to
write an op-ed piece. I don't know what has been said in that paper, and so am
not the one to do the piece, but in
the interests of time fired off an article. Of
course, in my haste I screwed up a
couple things and had to send in corrections. Given their possible hostility, I don't know
what will happen. Please let us know if the piece appears.
Any time the press takes an advocy position under the guise of straight news
it
bothers me. The importance of a free press to a free society cannot be
overstated. So when the press defines itself more and more as entertainment
as opposed to information, it frightens me. It may be entertaining
to watch beleagured parents, abuse survivors, and all good-souled people struggling
against a vast, cold, intellectual establishment with something to hide whining about
doing a simple little thing to protect our children. Evidently that vision has
more audience appeal than it does to look through the sham,
hysteria and posturing to show a handful of people misinforming the
public in order to achieve political ends. To misquote the Bok, Muir and Trickett
song, "And if you believe in that, why then, pigs can see the wind."
I am not just picking on the Lewiston paper. Their sins were of commission, but
how many sins of ommission were there? How many media representatives decided
that since nobody showed up at the rally, there was no story?
It is a short step from there to the wild misrepresentations of tv programs
on flying saucer abductions, the media hounding of a security guard who had done
nothing but to act well in the Olympic bomb situation, and the circus that always appears
around something like the Columbine shooting, where the story soon quit being
the event itself and became the media feeding frenzy surrounding it.
The extreme example of the media 'becoming the news rather than reporting it' is
given by a strip in the Tumbleweeds cartoon series. The flaky editor, bewailing
the lack of real news, is reminded of the old saw that 'Dog bites man is not news;
man bites dog IS news.' He runs from the office to return a few moments later
shouting, "Start the presses! I'll be there with my story as soon as I rinse out
my mouth." When the media go too far in the direction of entertainment over news,
they might as well be biting dogs. And that scares me. As I said, an independent
press informing a concerned public is an essential element of a free society.
Of course, it would be great to be part of a vast, cold, intellectual conspiracy. That
way I'll bet I could get someone to do my typing for me so I wouldn't make so many
mistakes.
Oh, by the way, this has been an editorial. Or had you guessed that already?
Don Tarbet