Journalism grows slack when it fails to ask questions. . .Its curiosity is like sex – use it or lose it.
What’s the point of journalism, if not to ask questions?
The Media delved into Gov. Sarah Palin’s Alaskan past. Her Republican presidential running mate complained about the background check. And that political tactic now seems stronger than journalistic curiosity.
The reportage wanes as the Palin phenomenon waxes stronger.
Reporters also seem to have used up their quota of inquiry on politics just when we need answers about economic issues..
They need to ask if Americans really want Uncle Sam as a landlord.
The case for Treasury takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sure seems compelling.
The Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation are a mess. Heads had to roll along with any other cliché that would clean up the government-sponsored secondary home mortgage market.
We don’t yet know for sure if the debacle in the total pubic and private securitized loan market will bring down the American economy.
So the government had to reform the two federally backed agencies that own half the mortgages in the nation.
But insuring the market is different from owning it.
We have just socialized mortgages in this country.
And the Press is asking fewer questions than about The Bridge to Nowhere that connects falsehood with Gov. Palin’s claim to reform public works.
For decades we’ve resisted socialized medicine.
Even now Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential candidate, campaigns against letting a federal bureaucrat stand between my doctor and me.
So why would I want a government clerk overseeing where I lay me down to sleep?
That’s neither a conservative nor a liberal question. It’s something sensible for The Press to ask as surrogate for ordinary, everyday folk.
Yes. Something had to be done about Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. And quick.
The swift and sure government action, however, has the look of forever about it.
Why isn’t there a sunset provision built into the takeover? Then the government could fix the problem and get out of the mortgage business, returning it to private or quasi-private enterprise.
But the business pages and Wall Street programs on TV aren’t asking that question.
Journalism grows slack when it fails to ask questions.
Its curiosity is like sex – use it or lose it.
It’s like taking Gov. Sarah Palin at her word that she is Alaska’s Snow White gift to the nation instead of really being as politically pure as the driven slush upon revelation by reporter scrutiny.
The Press should be more like the Pentagon. Russia shows why.
World peace depends just as much on understanding international conflict as shooting the globe up.
Military planners classically prepare to wage two American wars at once with enough assets left to meet a third emergency.
It’s the attention span as much as anything. But our Information Industry can’t meet the same standard.
Well, come to think of it, neither can the admirals and generals. But they at least try in theory.
Media are concentrating on politics. ’Tis the season.
With some effort they also are monitoring the machine gun-like rat-a-tat of ferocious storms strafing from the weather-Atlantic air war.
Yet for a long time journalism has lost sight of the shooting war that never quits giving hell between Israel and the Palestinian people.
Lebanon lies abandoned between bombings.
Iraq may be a success story. But we haven’t looked at it with the critical consideration of what happens to a corner crime scene when the beat cop moves on.
Iran was the subject of much Press speculation about our possible invasion. Too little real reporting is going on now that our government hasn’t pulled that trigger.
Military Intelligence Рthat clich̩ of an oxymoron Рlacks analysts who can speak Farsi. Media lack sufficient folks who even know adequately the difference between the Persian culture of Iran vs. the Arab rest of the Middle East.
Food, fuel and water shortages portend more resource wars, especially in Africa.
North Korea seems to have backslid – as the preacher would say – on nuclear disarmament. But just try to find a coherent news story explaining independently the American role.
The news consumer is thrown on too much dependence of our own self-serving government for explanations of worldviews, especially in the gaze toward Russia.
That’s the same Administration reinventing the Cold War.
Missiles in Poland, NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, patronizing attitudes toward Russian self-esteem – all got fashioned into a new containment policy.
But the bear doesn’t want to go into that cage. It even got restive, invading Georgian territory that leans toward Moscow anyway.
Now we have Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, and his oddly subordinate president of Russia, looking at the real prize, The Ukraine.
The new czars can cut off gas and oil to Europe on whim as a strategic weapon. That potential is akin to terrorists or rogue states shutting down the flow of Middle Eastern oil through the Straits of Hormuz – a crippling but real potential.
President Bush has made bear trainer threats he can’t enforce, because he has our diplomatic and economic and military assets stretched too thin.
Vice President Cheney castigated Russia from a Tbilisi pulpit on an aid trip as though he were a two-bit Ronald Reagan saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, bring down that wall.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cut her academic teeth on the Cold War. She quaintly denounced the Russian moves as unacceptable in the 21st Century. Yet it’s her Administration’s leadership that fails to move out of the Reagan era into realistic foreign affairs of this time.
Without intense, systematic, independent reporting and analysis on front page and prime time, those government pronouncements stand unchallenged by the benefits of journalism.
It’s like taking Gov. Sarah Palin at her word that she is Alaska’s Snow White gift to the nation instead of really being as politically pure as the driven slush upon revelation by reporter scrutiny.
Or it’s like depending on the National Weather service as the sole source of hurricane coverage instead of the animated maps, on-scene reports and progress updates by the energized Media.
American foreign affairs deteriorate badly and rapidly while The Media deploy their assets to other stories. The winning presidential candidate is going to have a greater problem than the drain of jobs, housing and affordable fuel.
We’re in for shock about world affairs.
And all because self-imposed cutbacks of resources and interest prevent The Media from providing the independent information democracy needs as much as it needs political platforms and weather shelters.
