Is getting old realizing people never learn?

Glenn Greenwald has posted a wonderful piece recognizing that the NY Times serves imperial power on a consistent basis, and is a dutiful stenographer of government officials when it comes to war making and imperial adventures. He has much derisive fun in his discussion of the hapless ombudsman editor at the Times who publicly asked readers whether NY Times reporters should challenge misstatement of facts from public officials.

That this generation of media leaders can't recognize the optimal role of media reporters is quite astonishing because, if they went to journalism school in the 1970s, they would have been taught by those who went through the 1950s Red Scare. Those teachers would have been the ones who realized too late that letting Joe McCarthy and his ilk (and there were plenty) call people Commies when they weren't, or assume that being a Commie meant being a traitor and a spy created the very atmosphere that undermined First Amendment rights and led to much despair in many quarters in the US.

I was privileged to know the late Edwin Bayley, who was Dean of the Journalism School at Berkeley from 1969 to 1985. I met him after his retirement in the late 1980s because I had found, read and devoured his outstanding book on Joseph McCarthy and the "press," entitled quite naturally, if not very excitingly, "Joe McCarthy and the Press." Bayley had been, during the 1950s, the lead political reporter for the largest-circulation newspaper in McCarthy's home state of Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal. Bayley's book consisted of an analysis of a variety of newspapers and their coverage of McCarthy through the period of the 1950s when the McCarthy Comet appeared, raged and burnt out. His conclusion was that reporters should have called McCarthy and others on their statements and made them accountable to prove their statements. The reporters should have quoted others and determined who was right or wrong. This failure, Bayley said, led to public officials misleading the populace and worse, polluted the discourse that kept us from discerning what was happening around us.

In our time, I often say that people should avoid the political cable and network shows (especially the Sunday morning shows), and most television and radio "news" in general. Such shows and "news" programs pollute any reasoned discourse and are often structured in a manner that works against the economic interests of most Americans. These shows and "news" are ridiculously venal to the worst elements of American ruling class power and promote the worst imperial policies our nation's leaders end up pursuing. Hey, but other than that, they are wonderful...:-)

Still, as I read Greenwald's post, I am left with an abiding sadness that our species does not learn from its past, even when it is painstakingly set forth in books and speeches, in schools and in mentors' experiences. It just doesn't seem to matter to the players who enter the top levels of our society, whether this be Barack Obama or Paul Brisbane or Jill Abramson. Pathetic, really.

PS: A funny story: I once had the privilege of meeting the legendary investigative reporter, Sy Hersh. I asked him about his label as investigative reporter, and before I could even finish the question, Hersh said: "Isn't it ridiculous that I'm called an investigative reporter? Shouldn't all reporters be investigating and informing people of what they investigate?" I laughed in agreement and said the reporters in the DC circuit are essentially stenographers, and he said he definitely agreed. He then signed a copy of his latest book, which I had handed him, and he was off...

ADDENDUM: I learned that the ombudsman, Brisbane, is actually the grandson of the famous (infamous?) editor of the NY Sun and then the Hearst chains around 100 years ago (Oh, look it up on Wikipedia...:-)). So here is a scion of the journalist world ruling class. And yet he asked that inane question. The way players play is a continued but morbid fascination...