Another media elite legend (in his own mind) retired last weekend.
Bob Schieffer of CBS’ “Face the Nation” signed off after more than 20 years at the helm of the Sunday talk show.
But before he departed, he had some remarkable things to say about his profession and the communications revolution that transpired during those two decades.
About Barack Obama, Schieffer begrudgingly acknowledged that his colleagues may have given him an easy ride in 2008 when he burst onto the political scene: “I think the whole political world was struck by this fellow who sort of came out of nowhere with this very unusual name, and when he won out in Iowa I think people sat up and took notice. Maybe we were not skeptical enough. It was a campaign … it is the role of the opponents to make the campaign. I think as journalists – what we do is watch the campaign, and we report what the two sides are doing. I think it is the politicians who make the campaign.”
So the role of the press is what? To passively report what politicians say without challenge? To report primarily the conflict between what political opponents argue? Is that what reporting is all about?
Schieffer was asked how Washington has changed over the last two decades: “It’s been turned upside-down, I mean, as has everything because of this revolution in communications. You know, we know don’t know where people get their news, but what we do know is they’re bombarded with information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most of the information is wrong and some of it, wrong on purpose. It is our job, I think, in mainstream journalism to try to cut through this maw of information and tell people what we think is relevant and what they need to know about. That is the job of the journalist, and I have to say, it’s harder and harder.”
So the role of the press is to filter the news for people – to sort out the wheat from the chaff? It’s primarily a role of telling people what to think? The central role of the press is what?
Here’s a guy who has been at the top of his journalism profession for 20 years and he just doesn’t even have a clue as to what the real job of the press is.
As a former journalism professor at UCLA and someone who has done just about every job one can do in the professional “mainstream” media world, let me get back down to basics: The central role of the free press in a free society is to serve as a watchdog on government and other powerful institutions. You can quote me on that. That’s why we have a free press in America. The founder of our country understood how essential it was to have checks and balances on government power. It was they who came up with the idea of a constitutional protection for this inalienable right.
Schieffer seems oblivious to this principle – this precept, this foundational historical fact.
And I’m not surprised. Few in my profession now understand what most of us understood one generation ago. Some have forgotten. Most have never been taught. But it wasn’t that long ago that I myself was teaching these principles at a major public university in the most politically correct state in the union. I was sharing these principles with hundreds of other “mainstream” reporters and editors in newsrooms in major newspaper markets. Today these principles are foreign concepts – even to the graying old guard of insiders.
Schieffer and the arrogant band of media elitists are running scared because they have lost their monopoly on information as a result of the communications revolution that has introduced real competition on a global scale, knocking down economic barriers to entry.
But how sad is it to hear Schieffer speak with such ignorance about the mission of his own profession.
