Sunday, May 27, 2018

Anniversary Surprise

1968 was a big year in American history for tragedy and horror. Which means that since the beginning of this year, we face many significant 50th anniversaries and newspaper commemorations.
But merely reporting "50 years ago today" is not enough. Our news organizations place a premium on new twists on old stories.

WaPo treated us to a couple of 50th anniversary twists in a single edition earlier this week (and they just keep coming). The Memorial Day long weekend invites this treatment because the piece can be prepared in advance so more journalists can head out early to the beach.

And so we have "Who killed Bobby Kennedy? His son RFK, Jr. doesn't believe it was Sirhan Sirhan.", which is fine as a feature story about RFK, Jr., but not necessarily as a search for truth.  Timing is everything. The coincidence with the 50th anniversary of the assassination tells us the author does not consider this a breaking news story and likely does not believe the allegation. Which puts this story squarely in the category of "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence" purporting that the Japanese military captured Earhart and her navigator alive, timed perfectly for the 90th anniversary of her disappearance.

Joel Achenbach asks "Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, lose the war in Vietnam?" employing the annoying journalism convention that turns a declarative statement into a rhetorical question, implicitly claiming the News label for an Opinion piece. One can argue that a more appropriate title would be " What took them so long? Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, prolong the war in Vietnam?"

In that case, instead of the message - Hey, fifty years later, let's entertain a new twist on an old story -- the question would be - How do we feel about overall news coverage of the Trump administration? Does the news media focus too much on the day to day and pat themselves on the back each time they identify a lie? Do they need to do a better job, still, after almost three years of this nonsense? (starting with the campaign) Are journalists too slow to adapt to changes in behavior among politicians? And, most important of all - Is the traditional news media up to the task of covering the 2018 midterms and the 2020 election? So far, it's not looking good.

Unfortunately, when given a choice, our traditional news people seem more interested in reporting out an improbable new take on history, rather than the more useful lesson for today that can be drawn from something that happened many years ago. In many ways, 2018 feels like it could easily become the most wrenching year in American history since 1968, which our still free press would do well to recognize and react accordingly.

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