There has been so much happening this week, it was really hard to pick one topic for a column. Issues like the heartbreaking attacks in Norway, the big babies fighting over their toys at our expense in Washington, and the media coverage of a movement to prevent the governor of Texas from attending and participating in a revival because of perceived constitutional issues absolutely begged to be addressed. However, after looking at all the things about which I was receiving emails and other communications, as well as watching the various news programs, I decided on a surprising topic. I decided to come out in defense of Fox News Network.
No, I absolutely am not going to defend the tactics used by Rupert Murdock's New Corps journalists to get their stories. Numerous news icons have come out to condemn those tactics, which included phone hacking, paying off law enforcement officials and blackmailing elected officials. In an interview on one news network, Martin Lewis, a Huffington Post contributor, said of Murdock, "He did a lot of stuff that was not illegal; it was just so sleazy nobody ever thought of doing it before."
In a separate interview on another network, Pete Hamell, former editor of the New York Post, said, "People have died for this profession. And those people (News of the World reporters) call themselves journalists. This is a disgrace. The name journalist is something we ought to wear like a badge of honor."
During the 10 years I spent reporting for the Courier News, I was proud of the fact that people knew they could talk to me about anything, even what could not yet be printed, and trust me not to betray that trust. And until the last couple of decades, I was not the exception.
Edward R. Murrow was the first "newsman" we brought into our homes, allowed into our family living room, and believed absolutely. And there was a good reason for that. Murrow was dedicated to telling his listeners the truth, no matter how hard it was to hear, and then letting the listeners make the decisions they needed to make with that information. It was Murrow who almost single-handedly ended the Eugene McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, although that battle cost him his news career. Murrow later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy for his commitment to freedom of information.
At about that time, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley began their tandem reporting, and were also welcomed with open arms into American households. And after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the news about the break-ins at the National Democratic Party Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, and tied them to then-President Richard Nixon, news reporters became almost heroic to the American public. It was during this time I made the choice to study journalism, which was considered a noble calling.
But then something happened that changed the nature of news media for the worse, and forever. In 1980, Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System and Time Warner launched Cable News Network, the first network dedicated to all news formatting 24 hours a day, every day. CNN was the only television network to carry the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster live, and this as much as anything created a demand for news on an immediate, any time of the day or night basis.
It wasn't until July 19, 1996, that Bill Gates' Microsoft Corporation paired with NBC to launch a new all-news network, MSNBC. The original intent of this network was to use the vast technical resource base of Microsoft to get the news on the air first, and to attract a younger, more tech-savvy audience. What actually did happen was that MSNBC started scooping CNN on most major stories, and that is where the cut-throat reporting began. It was a high-dollar, high-stakes race to get the stories, any stories, on the air before the other team, which was then put into the position of repeating something the viewer had already heard.
Four months later, Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News Network. And the game was afoot.
As Martin Lewis had said, Murdoch simply put into practice things no one else had done, because up until that time there was an unspoken standard for all journalists, lines that just were not crossed. But Murdoch's editors and other top people encouraged their reporters to do whatever it took to get the big stories.
And with Fox News, Murdoch did something else that may have been implied but was not openly practiced by any news service before. He created an all-conservative news service, openly voicing the conservative and ultra-conservative line, and financially supporting conservative political candidates.
Now, it is no secret that I am a little left of center in my political views. I do occasionally check the Fox News Network website to see what entertaining things are being put out by that organization currently. However, although I do not agree with the views presented by folks like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, I believe people deserve to have a place they can go to get news of the things that are important to them, and have a public platform for their own beliefs. After all, you cannot understand any topic unless you look at it from all sides, even the slightly nutty ones, and for that reason I believe the folks who are currently moving to end Fox News because of the actions of the News of the World hacks are absolutely wrong. Just clean up the tactics folks, keep it legal and ethical, and let's move forward from this.
plenbooks@live.com