Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9502200023
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was a long list:
We only let them speak in seven-second soundbites.
We only focus on controversy.
We're too skeptical.
We lie.
Carville, a staunch Democrat (I think - it's hard to believe anyone left of Ronald Reagan could live blissfully with Matalin, a strident Republican who ran George Bush's 1992 campaign), jokes about calling his next book "In Defense of Liberalism."
I'll call this essay "In Defense of the Media."
It's not that Matalin and Carville, a good-natured couple who put each other down between endearing glances, didn't have some important things to say Tuesday night; we should think hard about their criticism, which has been echoed by journalists writing in nearly every major magazine this past year.
(Besides, they told a nearly full Burruss Hall that they're naming their firstborn child, due in July, Madelyn. How bad could they be?)
But I think we need to take what they've said with a grain of salt and consider the source.
These two salespeople, who have the job of interpreting or "spinning" the actions and speeches of their candidates, are criticizing the media for interpreting events instead of "just giving straight facts." And they're making the media their sole scapegoat for the state of American politics. It's just a little too simplistic.
Is it the media's fault that America is cynical? Or are we just part of the world around us, a world that stopped trusting and started wondering?
Are we interpreting facts with bias, or are we putting things in a perspective so that readers and viewers will better know what brought us to a certain point?
Was it the media that broke into Democratic headquarters in June 1972? Was it the media who cheated on their wives?
Surely those in politics can take some of the blame, as can the people who defend them.
Market survey after market survey show consumers want Tonya Harding and O.J. Simpson on the 6 o'clock news and on the front page. If they didn't, would we still put them there?
I believe there's something to that old idea of killing the messenger. Often, we do have to bring bad news. And when we report on controversy, it's often because there is controversy for us to report.
But perhaps we are too slow to listen to callers who tell us stories of extraordinary friendships or heroism.
And perhaps we're too quick to report on something just because everyone else is reporting on it. (Matalin also criticized the media for something called "pack journalism" where the media run like a pack of wolves after the same carcass ... er, story).
Recently, I spoke to a class at Radford University where a student asked, "If someone else already has the story, wouldn't it make sense to just go find out about something new?"
"Yes," I told him. "It would."
Perhaps we wonder, too often, if a person is doing something out of goodness or just because there's a chance of personal gain.
There does come a point in time where skepticism is no longer healthy, but flushed and fevered.
When the world is full of people telling dozens of different versions of the truth, it's hard to overcome that. It's hard to overcome that, too, when we as a country have been burned by too many power-hungry politicians.
And it's hard to find a solution, which, like the truth, is somewhere between politicians and their press releases. Or Matalin and Carville, for that matter.
Madelyn Rosenberg is the Roanoke Times & World-News' assistant New River editor.
by CNB