I read David Broder's truly wretched screed
yesterday -- in which he demands immunity for Bush officials from
investigation and prosecution and attacks those who advocate
accountability -- and decided that I wouldn't write about it until
today because I didn't want it to infect my Saturday.
In a Politico article
discussing Obama's decision to release the OLC torture memos, Mike
Allen granted anonymity to "a former top official in the administration
of President George W.
The question of "How to save Journalism?" is a front-burner issue,
as major metropolitan dailies, like the Rocky Mountain News and the
Philadelphia Inquirer, implode. Calls for bailouts in the tens of
billions of dollars have gone up, even from critics of the industry,
and some are calling for further relaxation of limits on media
ownership so newspapers and television stations can merge, presumably
to improve the financial prospects of both.
Pacifica Radio, the oldest independent media network in the United States, turns 60 years old this week as a deepening crisis engulfs mainstream media. Journalists are being laid off by the hundreds, even thousands. Venerable newspapers, some more than a century old, are being abruptly shuttered. Digital technology is changing the rules, disrupting whole industries, and blending and upending traditional roles of writer, filmmaker, publisher, consumer. Commercial media are losing audience and advertising.
Watching Glenn Beck of Fox News rant about “progressive fascism” – and
muse about armed insurrection – or listening to mainstream pundits
prattle on about Barack Obama as the “most polarizing President ever,”
it is hard to escape the conclusion that today’s U.S. news media
represents a danger to the Republic.
This will be my last column
for the L.A. Times. After four years, I'll soon be starting a stint at
the Pentagon as an advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy.
Some might say I have a "new job," but because I'll be escaping
a dying industry -- and your tax dollars will shortly be paying my
salary -- I prefer to think of it as my personal government bailout.
When it comes to newspapers, I'm locked into a love-hate
relationship.
The love part? I flat-out love them. Always have. As a kid in
New York, I came from a mixed marriage - Mom read The New York Times
and Pop read the Daily News. Between the two, newspapers made the
world real to me.
A headline in the New York Times announced a few days ago: "Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory." This news ran above the fold on the front page.
"Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain," the article began. Readers quickly learned that it's starting to happen: "Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory..."
Big deal.
