Mainstream Media Risks Becoming Marginalized

Remember when retired CBS Evening News Anchor, Walter Cronkite would say "...And that's the way it is:" and you trusted his reporting enough to believe him.  Remember when Cronkite and other reporters tried to actually "report" the news instead of making or "influencing" what ended up being news.  We know FOX News can't be trusted.  FOX long ago marginalized itself when it became little more than a video version of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. 

Occasionally, I tune to FOX just to see what new scheme the mischief makers are cooking up.  Picture this panel of objectivity, Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams sitting around stoking the flames of divisiveness with their "commentary" that Barack Obama hasn't explained enough to their satisfaction his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And doesn't that Chris Wallace "Countdown until Barack Obama appears on FOX News" really silly and immature?  Well, if I didn't shy away from offending, I would say, "up yours FOX News".

Although bias reporting is the expectation from FOX, in some ways CNN and MSNBC are becoming just as bad.  Maybe there is merit to the claim that CNN has become synonymous with "Clinton News Network".  CNN and MSNBC continue to run the same sound bite video clips of Rev. Wright taken out of context while refusing to get off their journalistic behinds and explore other portions of the videos that might give more insight into the overall message that Rev. Wright was attempting to convey.  During one of his "inflammatory" sermons, Rev. Wright incidentally had words of praise for Bill Clinton.  Here's a novel idea, do an inside report about the different methods that Black preachers use to reach their parishioners.  The messages often are pointed in the Black Church, but the underlying message usually is about love for your neighbor.

On a more positive note, I do applaud David Gergen, Roland Martin, Candy Crawley, Jack Cafferty, and Keith Olbermann for at least trying to do objective and analytical reporting. At least from them we don't get the usual "he made this gain...but" comment hogwash. I also applaud the Blogs.  Without TPM, Politico.com and other similar sites, we wouldn't have gotten the Rev. Wright photo taken with Bill Clinton at his Monica Lewinsky repentance prayer breakfast or more insight into the Rev. Wright sound bite videos.

Nonetheless, it's still a sad commentary when we can't trust the mainstream media to maintain the standard set by journalists like Cronkite, Ed Bradley, Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel.  I hope that mainstream media does some quick soul searching before it becomes totally irrelevant. As a resource for journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists has developed an outstanding code of ethics.  Here's a hint for you talking heads, read it more often.