Mark Twain once quipped, "If you don't read the newspapers, you're uninformed. If you read the newspapers, you're misinformed!" Given the American public's insatiable desire for 24/7 news through newspapers, cable and network TV, and digital news sources, Twain's tongue-in-cheek comments carry more truth today than over a hundred years ago when he said them.
The latest example of misleading reporting is NBC celebrity anchorman Brian Williams' admission that he lied about coming under hostile fire in a combat zone in Iraq in 2003. His admission led to concerns that he may have lied when reporting on damage from Hurricane Katrina, rescuing puppies from a fire or who knows what else.
The problem is complex and has deep roots that range from early American newspaper publisher Ben Franklin's efforts to give colonial patriots a voice to William Randolph Hearst's and Joseph Pulitzer's "yellow journalism" in the early 1900s. In our own neck of the woods in 1925, Baltimore Sun reporter H.L. Mencken enhanced his celebrity status by making the Dayton Scopes trial a national referendum on religion versus evolution.
Similarly, the iconic Walter Cronkite was hugely influential in turning the tide of popular opinion against the Vietnam War, thereby doing exactly what North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap hoped the American media would do: win the war his soldiers couldn't. We also witnessed celebrated CBS anchor Dan Rather in 2004 lying about the service record of George W. Bush and leaving in disgrace two years later. Williams' lies are the latest in the transformation from news reporters to news makers. The news media no longer report the news, they are the news.
The problem with making news instead of reporting it is that the media ceases to be the watchdog of democracy and becomes another level of political operatives with no checks and balances other than the good sense of the American people. As a free country, America depends on our media to be an unbiased reporter of the news, not an instrument of any political party. Will the Brian Williams case awaken journalists to their professional role? I doubt it, but at least American citizens can learn two lessons from his mistakes.
First, modern news often comes from sound bytes manipulated by various sources to validate unique perspectives. Many younger folks enjoy getting "news" through the sharp wit, humor and condescension for many traditional American values espoused by The Daily Show or Rolling Stone. Older liberals turn to the N.Y. Times, CNN, MSNBC or the traditional networks. Conservatives find validation through Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or the Wall Street Journal. All of those sources include elements of entertainment, opinion and actual news. The black and white of facts and fiction become more like 50 shades of gray. Astute citizens should critically view the news they receive by considering the source.
The second lesson is that lack of honor is not just a news media problem. It is part of a larger moral decay within our society. In the bent toward a secular, godless perspective where there is no right or wrong, good or evil, truth or lie, light or dark, we are our own little gods accountable to no one but ourselves and government. Who are we as Christians to get on our "high horse," as our president recently lectured us? It is this multicultural worldview that neither knows nor cares about truth that led Brian Williams to think he could get away with his lies.
Wouldn't it be great if all our media could embrace the motto of this newspaper, "To report the news impartially, without fear or favor." Or, better yet, if we could reconsider what our Bible taught us in the Ten Commandments; you know the ones we learned before we got on our high horse: "Thou shalt not bear false witness"?
Roger Smith lives in Soddy-Daisy and is a frequent contributor to the Free Press editorial page. He is the author of "American Spirit."