Walter Cronkite

OK so if the pundits left, right, and center are to be believed Barack Obama’s 7-month-old Presidency is in trouble and his speech to Congress on health care was his last best chance to keep the ship afloat. We’ll let you decide if that’s a bit hyperbolic (see: Bill Clinton health care failure 1994, reelection 1996 or George W. Bush “Education President” 2001, Iraq War legacy-killer 2008).

The big speech on the hill is getting plenty of (digital) ink but it was not Obama’s most important speech on Wednesday. That came hours earlier in New York when he spoke at Walter Cronkite’s funeral. And what he said has everything to do with his, and America’s problems, real and imagined.

Standing before the assembled masses of media and journalism executives and stars Obama spoke truth to power:

It may have seemed inevitable that he was named the most trusted man in America. But here’s the thing: That title wasn’t bestowed on him by a network. We weren’t told to believe it by some advertising campaign. It was earned. It was earned by year after year and decade after decade of painstaking effort; a commitment to fundamental values; his belief that the American people were hungry for the truth, unvarnished and unaccompanied by theatre or spectacle. He didn’t believe in dumbing down. He trusted us.

What a novel thought. Earned trust built over time. Not trust claimed in splashy promos so silly they look like Daily Show parodies. But there was more.

We also remember and celebrate the journalism that Walter practiced — a standard of honesty and integrity and responsibility to which so many of you have committed your careers. It’s a standard that’s a little bit harder to find today. We know that this is a difficult time for journalism. Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing. Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat. Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line.

Ah yes, money. As Obama notes journalism is in perilous times. The giant corporate owners of newspapers are staring into the abyss of free online content and vanishing paid paper circulation. Advertising has disappeared. They are responsible to their shareholders first. Readers and citizens second (maybe).

And television? Despite the predictable lionizing of Mr. Cronkite, network television was always the place of news stars who commanded large salaries to recreate the morning headlines from the New York Times and Washington Post in moving pictures. Before GE figured out it could force NBC to make a profit in news the networks at least did a public service in exchange for the use of the publicly-owned airwaves. Remember those hour-long documentaries in prime time? Those days are long gone as the President noted.

And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed. “What happened today?” is replaced with “Who won today?” The public debate cheapens. The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should — and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation. We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society. Which price is higher to pay? Which cost is harder to bear?

It is not a lofty philosophical question. The destruction of journalism as a place where citizens could reliably get (mainly) facts and reason is a cancer that will destroy this 233-year-old democracy. It’s easy to blame the big bad companies that control the mainstream media (by which I mean giant corporate media like Fox, NBC, USA Today — not the silly meaning ascribed the phrase by bed-wetting whiny conservatives) but the old answer — the audience chooses what to watch/read/listen — is partly true.

There are choices galore. We have become the Wal-Mart of information: Cheap, available, and disposable. We consume the information we desire. We depend on our Facebook friends to tell us what’s going on. We only watch what we already believe. We believe we know the truth while the other side is brainwashed. Nuance? Shades of gray? The possibility that perhaps we are wrong and the other side is right? Even occasionally? [Insert shouts of righteous indignation here.]

We are children. And we have very bad parents.

The crowd at Cronkite’s funeral dutifully nodded at Obama’s points and then got into their awaiting black cars and returned to their plush offices to prepare the next posting/article/op-ed/newscast/chatterfest. They all might individually agree with what the President said but likely feel powerless to do anything about it. And be honest about it: Is Keith Olbermann suddenly going to grow up and use his keen wit and insight to examine all sides of an issue? Is Diane Sawyer going to grab the reins of World News and use it to give her viewers more than fast-paced gloss-over 2-minute reports on the biggest stories of the day? Is Rupert Murdoch going to direct his minions at Fox News to at least be responsible enough to stick to the facts instead of making things up? Is Jon Klein going to use CNN’s substantial resources to replace his network’s prime-time chatter with actual reporting?

And from their perspective why should they? The audience would rather watch train-wreck TV. And they have all those choices!

If you expect the media to fix itself you are delusional. Along with his honest diagnosis Obama gave the modern-day “giants” of journalism a little pat on the back but it was hard to take seriously. Cronkite was no god. Murrow did more to save America from itself. Adolph Ochs essentially founded objective American journalism. But Cronkite at least believed that he had a responsibility to his country. The Sean Hannity’s of this world believe only in what supports the largest paycheck.

“This democracy,” Walter said, “cannot function without a reasonably well-informed electorate.” That’s why the honest, objective, meticulous reporting that so many of you pursue with the same zeal that Walter did is so vital to our democracy and our society: Our future depends on it.

So look in the mirror. When the American people stop caring about what’s true and factual instead buy into whatever superstition or fantasy suits them at the moment, our democracy is lost.

Our American story continues. It needs to be told. And if we choose to live up to Walter’s example, if we realize that the kind of journalism he embodied will not simply rekindle itself as part of a natural cycle, but will come alive only if we stand up and demand it and resolve to value it once again, then I’m convinced that the choice between profit and progress is a false one — and that the golden days of journalism still lie ahead.

I Know Nothing!

It’s nothing new. Humans seem to prefer faith to facts. And I’m not talking about religion.

Howard Kurtz got lots of (liberal) blog links early this week with an article about the health care “debate” and how facts have been relegated to the sidelines. Kurtz now reports that it was Monday’s most commented piece on the paper’s website as people poured forth their vitriol from both sides of the health care aisle.

Kurtz’s main point was pretty simple: Despite the fact that many reporters demonstrably proved that the death panels myth was indeed a myth, almost half of the Americans surveyed by NBC News believe death panels are a part of the President’s health care reform proposals. Sadly this is not surprising. Jay Leno has played the often incredible ignorance of Americans for laughs on the Tonight Show for years. Likewise Comedy Central’s The Daily Show openly laughs at ignorant Americans (especially those in the media and politics) almost nightly.

It’s all pretty funny until someone gets hurt. And that’s what’s happening. It’s not so much someone but something. America.

It’s one thing to simply decry how uninformed or ignorant people are about things in the news but that misses the point. The problem is that many Americans are eager to be misinformed and wear it as a badge of honor.

Not long ago I gave a talk about politics and media to a small group of people upstate. These were people who paid attention. They read the papers. They watched the news. They listened to the radio. But when I suggested that media hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, and Sean Hannity are not journalists and that no one should pretend otherwise, I was greeted with dismay. There was nothing I could say, no data I could cite that would convince one woman that what came out of Limbaugh’s mouth was not a stream of facts. Rush says he’s 100% correct in his assertions and this woman could not be persuaded otherwise. Others in the room were aghast until I suggested that Rachel Maddow was hardly different.

“But Rachel doesn’t make things up!” “She’s not like O’Reilly and Limbaugh because she tells the truth!” Indeed she traffics in a completely different drug. She does focus in on facts but often only those facts that support her point of view. Facts that don’t help don’t generally get a big airing on her show.

That’s all fine if people understand that prime-time cable news is not the province of journalism but of opinion. The problem is the avid fans of these shows don’t see the difference. The opinions they share with their favored hosts are the facts — according to them.

It’s easy to blame the media for all this and in some respects it’s accurate as well. In their drive to stay relevant (and alive) newspapers have been hacking away at the things that made them a critical part of American democracy. Reporting facts.

When the television networks were freed from producing newscasts and documentaries as a condition of “borrowing” the public airwaves the result was inevitable. Real journalism is expensive. Sitting two people with opposite opinions down in a TV studio is cheap.

When was the last time you saw a well-produced, thoroughly reported story told by an experienced correspondent — a journalist — on CNN, Fox, or MSNBC? Their days are filled with yakking lightweights chatting up current events with whoever will come on free. Their nights are filled with screaming sarcasm and anger from highly-paid hosts trading knowing lies with a small stable of favored “experts”. There is no news here. This is “news” as a game played with a nod and a wink.

As America’s most trusted news anchor (John Stewart) pointed out recently, Fox News hosts have made a healthy living railing against the “mainstream media” while simultaneously trumpeting the fact that Fox News is the number one rated all-news network by a very large margin. Can’t have it both ways? Sure you can in a country where huge numbers of citizens can’t even grasp the concept of cognitive dissonance.

But the media is the dealer feeding the fix. It didn’t create the addiction.

You talkin' to me?

Somewhere along the line that whole Age of Reason thing has failed to stick. Logic is the province of eggheads. Facts are ephemera. Belief is all that matters.

This is an epidemic no one will confront because it hits all the buttons Americans are afraid of: Intelligence, education, real dialogue. Thinking. The American creation myth since Andrew Jackson is built on action. Never mind that our oft-lionized Founding Fathers valued intelligence far more. We are a nation of Rambos and Dirty Harrys. Reagans and Rumsfelds. Doers not thinkers. And in that reality facts don’t really matter.

So let people point out that there are no death panels in ObamaCare. That there is no evidence whatsoever that the World Trade Center was brought down by: a) bombs; b) U.S. missiles; c) Isrealis; d) UFOs. That Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. For many Americans conclusive absence of evidence is no barrier to belief in a thing.

This is where our leaders fail us. Politicians refuse to tell the truth. When Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley (widely seen as a responsible adult) parrots the death panel fiction he aids and abets our decline. He and his ilk are cowards.

When cable news claims to be “Fair and Balanced” or “The Place for Politics” Orwell’s fictional future becomes our factual present. When being “The Coolest News on Earth” gets ratings it can’t be long before one network adopts that as it’s slogan.

And it will only get worse. As we splinter into ever smaller social networking groups, subscribing to our selected Twitterers, monitoring our selected Facebook friends, reading our selected websites, watching our selected cable shows or You Tube channels, we will become a shattered mirror. Each of us living as if the world is really just a reflection of…ourselves.

Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe the rest of the world will follow us down this rathole. But if not, the decline of America won’t be as a result of an overextended empire, a reckless war, a bankrupt financial system, or a permissive culture. It will be because we gave up on reason.

Keith Olbermann

Orginally posted 3/29, updated 4/11

Hey if the New York Post can write great, if somewhat misleading headlines, why can’t I?

The equation that liberal Keith and conservative Bill were essentially separated at birth may not apply in all ways but in at least one they are equal: Both are blowhards who seem almost incapable of admitting mistakes.

(Each has one major exception to this: Olbermann famously wrote the “Mea Culpa” essay for Salon in 2002 about his experience at ESPN and O’Reilly admitted in 2004 he was wrong in believing President Bush’s claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq).

The latest incident involves a bizarre Olbermann attack on a supposedly fake Twitter account set up in his name that the acerbic host claimed was set up by one of his enemies at Fox News. A week and a half ago Olbermann did is usual over-the-top routine on Twitter and made it his “Worst Person in the World” for the alleged transgression. But it turns out almost no part of the story was true and Olbermann and MSNBC refuse to respond.

Red State summarizes all this here and a post on Daily Kos confirms a key part (that NBC set up the Twitter account for Olbermann and had staffers post to it — see item #5). It seems that Olbermann went on a rhetorical rampage without doing much, if any, checking to see if his claims were true.

Olbermann apparently got almost everything wrong:

• The Countdown Twitter account was not a fake  — and in fact there were two of them. Here’s Twitter founder Biz Stone’s Tweet on the matter:

Funny story about the @keitholbermann account—MSNBC was running it and Keith didn’t know when he called us the Worst in the World (D’oh!) 5:22 PM Mar 24th from web

• The man he accused of setting it up is not a Fox News stooge but a very critical former employee who sounds much more like somone Olbermann would quote instead of slime.
• It’s hard to set up a Twitter account (“I’m not on Twitter. I tried to sign up last summer but abandoned the project.”).
• And that the “junk email” Olbermann claims tipped him off was actually junk email. It was, apparently, a invite to follow someone on Twitter which would have been familiar to any Twitter user has Olbermann actually shown it to one.

One unremarked part of this story is how little coverage it has gotten from obvious Olbermann fans like the HuffPo. After an initial report showing video of Olbermann’s rant there has been no follow up. Can you imagine what the liberal netroots would say if the shoe were on O’Reilly’s foot?

The point is not that the liberal or conservative netroots and media are one-sided and sometimes right or wrong — that goes without saying — but that partisans who believe only they speak the truth are dangerously deluded and add nothing to helping people understand what’s really going on in the country and world.

Get Real is all about casting a skeptical eye on our nation of loudmouths. This is why.

UPDATE

Well it took some time but Keith finally admitted he was wrong. Sort of. It’s obviously incredibly painful for him. Like giving birth to a hippo. Watch and see for yourself. I’m thinking this doesn’t really deserve a Mea Ciulpa….

Note: this is video contains the Olbermann “response” and was produced by Caleb Howe of the ActiCons blog.