Marty Kaplan holds the Norman Lear Chair at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His Jewish Journal columns have won First Place in the Southern California Journalism Awards six times in the past six years. Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com
Now that CNN has put Lou Dobbs out to pasture, you\’d think that The Most Trusted Name in News would make the reporting of facts – you know, the practice formerly known as journalism – the hallmark of its brand. Dream on.
If you’re depressed by the way the national debate about health care has been playing out, just wait until the rubber hits the road on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Israel. If you’re enraged by the way Wall Street’s rescue has made us hostages to their recklessness, get ready for how the oil and coal industries are going to game the energy and climate change decisions ahead. If you’re scared by the way the media can trivialize and polarize and make entertainment out of any topic in its crosshairs, imagine its toxic impact when we get around to dealing with education, immigration and trade.
It’s my own fault, I know, for watching “Showbiz Tonight” over the weekend, but I couldn’t find the news on any other channel, and I’d forgotten that HLN, better known as CNN’s Headline News, had turned its definition of journalism over to Nancy Grace, host of “television\’s only justice themed/interview/debate show, designed for those interested in the breaking crime news of the day”; to Robin Meade, author of “Morning Sunshine: How to Radiate Confidence and Feel It, Too”; to Jane Velez-Mitchell, author of “iWant: My Journey from Addiction and Overconsumption to a Simpler, Honest Life,” who has been “stand[ing] up for the powerless, and speak[ing] for those who don\’t have a voice” on HLN since Glenn Beck left it for Fox News. And, of course, to “Showbiz Tonight.”
While the left despairs of Barack Obama’s capitulation to K Street and Wall Street, the right continues to insist that he’s a Marxist, socialist, communist enemy of capitalism. What could possibly convince the right that it’s wrong – about that, or anything else?
Something’s going to happen next week, or next year, that will completely change the story.
“Curiosity: The Questions of Our Life” is the name of a new 60-episode five-year “landmark” series just announced with much >fanfare by the Discovery Channel.
I don’t know which is more dispiriting: the New York Times’ failure to call Betsy McCaughey a liar, or Barack Obama’s failure to call Chuck Grassley a liar. It’s tempting to think of both failures as cowardice, a mortal fear of being branded “liberal.” But ironically it’s liberalism itself that makes them both mistake their cowardice for fair-mindedness.
By the way, have I mentioned that my 19-year-old daughter’s novel is a bestseller?
