OUR MEDIA COULD - SHOULD - MUST DO BETTER

By Ruth A. Sheets

I’ve been a news junkie since childhood.  My family watched the news most evenings.  It was Huntly and Brinkley or Walter Cronkite who faithfully broadcast the day’s news.  Those who either read the news or reported from the field seemed honest, fair, and to be “telling it like it is.” 

When I was a kid I didn’t know that the news could be shaped to get out just what certain people in power wanted us to know.  When they told us they were reporting from somewhere in the world, we had no doubt that was true.  When they showed us violence in Birmingham, Alabama, we saw police and their dogs attacking people, true.  When a rocket was launched into space, we watched the story with intense interest and worry for the astronauts. 

Of course, not everything was exactly as presented, but we had a sense that the basics were accurate.  We had 3 networks back then plus Public Broadcasting.  There were also radio, newspapers, and magazines to add some depth to the TV broadcasts.  One of the most powerful broadcasts I remember was the one in which CBS’s Walter Cronkite, having visited Vietnam to informally assess the situation, declared we could not win the war there.  I was shocked because media support up until that time seemed complete.  They did show protests, but which looking back on after the Cronkite statement, I realized was often not favorable or even unbiased.  At the time I supported the war because I couldn’t believe our president would be putting so many men into a war that was unwinnable and unjust.  That broadcast and a diary our Civics teacher assigned to keep of the events of the war for February 1968 helped turn me away from support of the Vietnam war.  A few amazing protest songs pushed me the rest of the way.  

I don’t believe the broadcast media has been as well-respected since then.  That is probably the fault of the media themselves.  Newspapers had their zenith with reports on Watergate, the FBI’s spying on our own citizens, and “The Pentagon Papers” in the early 1970s.  It isn’t that there were not good reporters and writers but that somehow over time the reporting became watered down and really negative.  Clinton’s sexual conduct, which was pretty normal in politics at the time seemed more important than the actual challenges the world was facing.  They somehow missed the lead-up to the 2008 crash (or somehow didn’t communicate well what was happening). 

In 2015, an inexperienced con artist sucked up all the air that could have kept our media honestly balanced.  Donald Trump brought his racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and general ignorance further onto the public stage and was covered as though he really had something amazing to offer this nation after his claim that Obama was a bad president and not really American.  His opponent in 2016 was Hillary Clinton, a very prepared, competent, experienced candidate, yet the media, whenever they blasted us with Trump’s bombast, whining, and hatred, felt they just had to mention Clinton’s emails (using a private server while in office, a common practice among government employees) or Ben Gazi (where 4 American officials were killed by terrorists in 2012).  The newspapers did somewhat better, but still covered nearly everything Trump said and did.  Tom Patterson of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy wrote in 2017,

“The mainstream press highlights what’s wrong with politics without also telling us what’s right.  It’s a version of politics that rewards a particular brand of politics. When everything and everybody is portrayed as deeply flawed, there’s no sense making distinctions on that score, which works to the advantage of those who are more deeply flawed. Civility and sound proposals are no longer the stuff of headlines, which instead give voice to those who are skilled in the art of destruction.” 

And now, that negativity in coverage continues.  We have thousands of media sources mostly online, but also on TV, radio, and in print.  They know well that Trump is unfit for office, has lied in public more times than anyone I know of has counted, and is a supporter of and model candidate for “project 2025.” Those things are poorly covered and our media try to “sane-wash” Trump’s disjointed, menacing, hate-filled, and lie-saturated events.  Our various media managed to make the June 27^th debate seem like Biden’s inadequacy and old age were disastrous while nearly totally skipping the reality that Donald Trump lied at least 30 times and made no sense.  That fact is now out here, but it is still not seen as being as problematic as Biden’s old age despite Trump being only 3 years younger than Biden, essentially no difference by their age.  Biden is still working as president and getting things done; Trump travels around the country fearmongering, blaming immigrants for crimes that have not happened, and of course, lying at every opportunity, yet receives far too much coverage. 

I don’t understand our media’s need to prop up Trump, Vance, and the rest of their Republican ticket in the face of their hatred, incompetence, and attempts to promote a Trump dictatorship.  Or, maybe it’s just the media’s corporate obsession with political negativity and the value of disruption and chaos. 

The media now are facing a real challenge, interesting, intelligent, caring, prepared, patriotic candidates in Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.  They are careful, creative, and refuse to take Trump’s baiting nor respond to his insults.  Some of the media, at least are covering their current speeches and rallies alongside Trump’s and possibly by quirk of fate, Harris and Walz are looking ready to assume the positions of President and Vice President while Trump is looking more and more like the incompetent child-man he really is.  I hope people are noticing.