How Edward R. Murrow ruined the News

The media has been full of this feud between conservative commentators and the White House. The President claims that Fox News is not real news. Fox News, and the vast majority of the other media outlets claim that it is. From an historical perspective, the whole argument is rather silly. There is not now nor has their ever been objective new. If one looks at the history of news in America, it seems obvious that it is far more objective now than it was in, say, the Nineteenth Century, during the age of yellow press. One has only to look at the portrayals of the news in the life of Samuel Clemens or the play The Front Page to see how slanted it once was. In Mark Twain's day, reporters regularly made up quotations and whole news items when new was slow or they were bored. But in recent years, news has been clear about its reason for existence--to report the news. That is, until Edward R. Murrow. Edward R. Murrow was a television reporter in the Fifties, who began the first magazine type "news" program See It Now. Murrow is credited with bringing down the reign of Joe McCarthy with his expose of him. His special report Harvest of Shame first focused attention on the plight of migrant workers. Murrow was by any standards an excellent reporter. So how could he have ruined the news? Because Edward R. Murrow is held up as an example in every journalism class in this country. Young, idealistic reporters want to be him. They see news as a means to affect social change, as he did. But they forget the first objective of journalism--to report the news fairly. They are not in the least interested in this. They all want to be Murrow, or Woodward and Bernstein, not Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley. These men were journalists with strong personal opinions, but they understood that the news segment at least should be objective, and that they should keep their opinions to themselves. The media seems to have forgotten that today. News has been called the fourth branch of government. Investigative journalism informs us, challenges us, and most importantly makes politicians afraid to be bad. When the media becomes the lapdog of the powerful and elite, it is no longer news, but propaganda. On the other hand, when it sees itself as the revolutionary resistance, it is also propaganda. There must be room for all opinions. The press was a great help to democracy in its early days, not because it was objectives, but because it was free of government interference. There were Republican papers, to be sure, but there were also Democratic ones. People were free to buy what they wished. Today, that basic right is being threatened by an administration who does not seem to mind interfering with the free flow of ideas to achieve its purposes. That is truly scary. Unfortunately, the media is all too complicit in its own destruction. Fueled by dreams of being Edward R. Murrow, and duped by a powerful elitist group of politicians and professors masquerading as crusaders for the poor, they continue to focus their guns on traditional America and ignore those who are really in charge. The keep looking for another Joe McCarthy to revile, while those who trample the rights of individual Americans almost literally get away with murder. We do not need crusaders in the news room. We need, strong, sensible and courageous journalists who will not accept the status quo, but who will also respect the right of all Americans to be heard. We need people who love the news more than they love their reputations, there careers, or their political affiliation. Only then can we be sure that democracy will continue to flourish.