Sunday, July 03, 2005

What should be the role of Main Stream Media?

Main Stream Media should do their job –

In this new 24 hour news cycle of cable news and internet blogs, what should be the roll of MSM? I think one important role should be to provide the public with true information about our leaders and officials and more importantly, our potential leaders. This is the one thing that a giant media corporation should be good at. They can take the time to research and conduct interviews and do background checks and then present an honest view of a political candidate or cabinet nominee or judgeship.

When the public knows about the character of a person, we are more likely to make the best choice for our represented government. Currently, we are left with political attacks, personal smears and innuendos conducted by all sides and the public is left in the dark.

Two examples come to mind. First, Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the US. While he was in office, the public was constantly bombarded with charges that he was a dunce, an actor only reading scripts, an intellectual light weight, and a hands off executive…
Years later, after he left office, we are discovering the real Reagan through his biography, his personal letters, his writings and we see a totally different Reagan that was portrayed by the media, and the late night show hosts. We discovered that he wrote most of his own speeches. He was a brilliant thinker. He had strong religious believes. He had character and a strong sense of right and wrong. In short, he was a great American and one of the best Presidents in the 20th Century. He was given a tremendous State funeral and admired world wide.
It begs the question, why was this not made public before or during his office?
The information was out there. If anything, it would have been easier to dig up all this information. Lucky for us, in spite of the distortions and spin, he was elected and served.

A more recent example is during the 2004 election. Senator Kerry’s personality and records were not made public until after the election. Newsweek publish an article about how he was indecisive. His military records were not completely released and his college grades were also not available until after the election. It turns out he had worse grades than Bush. Why couldn’t all this information be released before the election?
If the MSM was doing their job, there is no question that many of the questions could be answered. We the public would be able to make a more educated decision.

Currently, we have judges being nominated, cabinet and UN posts being debated.
Why not do an in depth interview on every nominee and get to the truth. I would hate to find out after the fact that either we missed out on a great public servant or we put some people of poor character in a position of power due to inaccurate information or spin.

In summary, if the MSM wants to stay relevant in this new media age, they should stick to what they do best. Get the truth out and let the public decide.

-Jack Lee
Yorktown Hts. NY

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