Journalism's Dark Ages

Just over a year ago, noted television journalist and UB alumnus Wolf Blitzer came here and delivered a speech for the Distinguished Speakers Series. He was kind enough to agree to a question-and-answer session with student journalists and communication students before his speech, and I was lucky enough to attend.

After he talked and joked briefly about attending school in Buffalo, Blitzer opened up for questions. When selected, I asked Wolf a question about his network's coverage of the road to war in early 2003. I pointed out that when massive demonstrations took place in New York and Washington before the invasion of Iraq, many protesters also stood outside CNN and Fox News in response to what they perceived was poor coverage of the Bush administration's case for war.

Given what we know now, I said, that Iraq likely had no weapons of mass destruction, shouldn't someone have paid a little more attention to these complaints?

Wolf's slightly annoyed answer came in two parts. "Well, there weren't really that many people outside CNN," he said. Aside from being untrue, it was beside the point.

Then, after uttering a platitude about hindsight being 20-20, Wolf said his network "always made sure that when we had someone who was for the war on, we always balanced it with someone who was against it."

Perhaps. But that answer reflects a deep problem with American journalism today - the notion that a responsible reporter simply must balance two opinions rather than pursuing the actual truth.

So what if CNN had an equal number of talking heads debating the war? As journalists, they should have been rigorously investigating the truth behind clearly dubious claims about Iraq's weapons potential, which has since been proven to be non-existent. Thousands and thousands of people have died because America rushed to war under false pretenses.

Blitzer's network abdicated its responsibility to thoroughly question the government's claims, and did so at a time when so much was at stake. Having talking heads from both sides spew five-second sound bites about the war, pro or con, is not journalism. It's "partisan hackery," as Jon Stewart aptly put it when he appeared on the recently cancelled CNN show "Crossfire." Such "debates" between talking heads are not informative; they simply divide the issues into binary, left vs. right stances that are too simplistic to be useful to anyone.

To be sure, CNN should be commended for at least being more or less truthful in their reporting. Their main competitor, Fox News, has stars like Bill O'Reilly, who consistently tell blatant lies, such as recent gems like boldly asserting President Bush did not oppose the 9/11 commission, which he did; stating that we found chemical weapons in Iraq, which we did not; and fabricating a newspaper - "The Paris Business Review," and citing it as a source while supporting claims that his show's French boycott was having an effect.

So CNN isn't that bad, but what kind of a standard is simply not telling blatant lies? A pretty shabby one.

Democracy thrives on informed interaction between citizens and elected officials. People are re-elected, or not, based on their performance in office and stance on the issues.

A key link between the people and their government is a free press. If this link is broken, it's very difficult for citizens to hold elected officials responsible. How can we demand accountability if we don't know the truth?

But all is not lost. Journalism is in a dark age, but it can recover. The Internet is already leading a journalistic revolution, where information is disseminated freely, without fear of corporate censorship or slavery to sound bites.

Even mainstream journalism is showing signs of life, notably Sy Hersh's terrific work for The New Yorker. Hersh, who is quickly building a reputation as the best journalist of our time, exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and just published a story exposing the Bush administration's military intentions in Iran.

Journalists operate within a public trust - seeking the truth on behalf of the people and challenging power at every turn. Recently, the American media has failed us miserably, but it's never too late to start catching up.