"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel."
—Rupert Murdoch
"The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny."
—Mark Twain
"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself."
—Joseph Pulitzer
The mainstream American media is not doing its primary job of keeping the citizens of the country accurately informed about the matters that concern them. It has not done so for a long, long time.
Every now and then, some journalist manages to do the job that all journalists should be doing every day and it becomes a sensation, the scoop, the story of the hour, and the journalist doing journalism becomes as big a story as the story itself.
The most recent example of this ongoing dynamic of American media is Michael Hastings' fine piece of investigative journalism published last month in Rolling Stone that ended the military career of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The general's career deserved to end for more reasons than the disrespectful, derogatory statements and attitude he expressed to Hastings concerning the leaders of the civilian government for whom he works (-ed). Prior to that the media missed or tippy-toed around the illegal, inhumane, indecent "interrogation methods" used on Iraqi prisoners by Task Force 6-26, of which he was the head. Good journalism would call those methods what they are: torture.
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And the mainstream media let slide the general's key role after that in the cover-up of the fratricide of Ranger Pat Tillman. It ignored or, at best, tippy-toed around the cynicism, dishonesty and disrespect for a fallen soldier it took for McChrystal to recommend Tillman for a posthumous Silver Star for valor "in the line of devastating enemy fire," when he knew Cpl. Tillman had been killed by one of his own men. Torture is not an interrogation method and fratricide is not valor, and people incapable of making such distinctions are wing-nuts, no matter their uniform or resume. And wing-nuts in positions of power are dangerous to the health of the planet and all its inhabitants.
But then Hastings' article was published under the headline "The Runaway General—Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: the wimps in the White House."
Hooah!
Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone have done the American public a great service by doing nothing more than keeping the citizens of the country accurately informed about the matters that concern them. Rolling Stone, after a stylish hiatus of several years, appears to have returned to its roots of traditional journalism and delivering some of the best in-depth political coverage to be found in America. Its return to its roots is both long overdue and very welcome. Both Hastings and the Rolling Stone deserve a Pulitzer. The light of awareness is perceptibly brighter because of their efforts, and every American who disagrees with the values of the cynic, the mercenary and the demagogue is grateful to them. It is sincerely hoped that Rolling Stone and Hastings continue to deliver such traditional, high-standard journalism. The country needs it.
The larger question is why it took Rolling Stone—rather than the more mainstream New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Harpers, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, or even Vanity Fair or Esquire—to call out the most powerful military man on Earth?
It is a question that, in my view, deserves a great deal of attention.
The answer will not be one-dimensional and will involve some self-reflection concerning what each person reads, listens to and watches to acquire the information about matters that concern them, and, of course, why. It will also involve some self- and institutional-reflection concerning what each reporter chooses to report and who to interview, and, of course, why. It will distinguish between traditional journalism, which reports the hard, tight facts, and journalism that massages them (and the source) into a message that is looser and feels better.
The fine cartoonist and satirist Mr. Fish, whose work can be found at truthdig.com, has a wonderful cartoon titled "Nose for Trouble." In it are six journalists caricaturized as large noses with stick legs and wearing hats marked Press. Five of them are standing apart from and looking at the sixth. The caption reads: "Hey! Rolling -f*&#%- Stone magazine! You trying to get us all fired or something?! You obviously don't know the first thing about being fair and balanced!"
The noses of the five journalists talking are covered in brown all the way up to their non-existent eyeballs.
The nose of the Rolling Stone journalist is clean.
Hooah!
