Media provocation, not information

The passing of Walter Cronkite, and the clips of his career highlights, made me realize again how much the news media has changed since the day I decided to become a journalist.

There's no doubt Cronkite's career paralleled a remarkable time in our history: man on the moon, civil rights, the Vietnam war, the assassinations of three iconic figures. And I remember how mesmerized we were as he led us through all of those events. It strikes me how coolly Cronkite described these things to us, live on the air.

I still think the mark of a true broadcaster is how well he can handle these kinds of events as they're happening; how well he can edit on the fly as information is being handed to him, as he is seeing live or just taped pictures and describe them.

The trick that so many of today's newscasters miss is just stating facts. Just stating what you know. Not speculation, not commentary. Just what you know. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Today CNN went on the air with the notion that the Coast Guard was firing shots at boats in the Potomac River. It turned out to be a drill (perhaps the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks wasn't the best day for the Coast Guard to have a drill like this, however routine, but it was still a drill), but CNN went with it because on the radio scanner it was listening to it sounded like more than a drill.

All that is is a news organization trying to get a scoop before it really has all the facts. CNN said "it would have been irresponsible not to report on what we were hearing and seeing." It was irresponsible to report solely on the basis of a police scanner.

This all goes to show how 24-hour news channels have changed what media consumers believe news is these days.

Commentators like Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Lou Dobbs and Nancy Grace are pawned off as de facto newscasters on us, when all they are is news commentators, pundits.

There is no one out there telling us the news, certainly not on cable TV anyway: not Fox, not CNN, not MSNBC, no one. Even CNN's Headline News, which used to be just that: headline news, has a slogan now of "News and Views." The NBC, CBS and ABC evening news programs still do a pretty good job, but have a hard time drawing viewers now.

People just want to be entertained, they don't want to know the news.

And all the news channels do -- every one of them -- is provoke us, they don't inform us.

None of us knows anything anymore.

We've got this huge debate/barroom brawl about health care going on in this country right now, a fight that has erupted into violence at town hall meetings and even caused a congressman to heckle the president of the United States speaking to a joint session of Congress.

No one really knows anything about what anyone is proposing because all the news channels are doing is provoking us, instead of informing us.

I hope you will notice that I've tried very hard not to tip my hand on how I feel about the health care debate. I just wish news anchors would do the same thing. CNN and MSNBC are known -- known! -- for being liberal, just as Fox News Channel is known for being conservative. They wear those labels proudly. It's shameful. If someone is on TV purporting to give us the news, we should never know anything about their opinions.

I'm a sports reporter, but even so, no one in my newsroom knows which way I lean politically. But I know way too much about what many of them believe. Agreeing or disagreeing with them isn't the point. I shouldn't know, period.

I'm frightened for our country because ignorance has turned into disrespect. I'm afraid soon it will turn into hatred.