A person could blog while on short trip to Florida, certainly, but it is too hard to study Red Sox minor leaguers and observe whether Tim Wakefield can actually get off the mound, while considering world and national affairs. It did not help that much of that passes for news on the various media available while in transit was about yet another person's problems with his sexuality, and not anything of any real significance.

Congressman Patrick Kennedy has his own problems: many of them we know about, and there are likely a few about which we are ignorant. He was a bit over the top then in a speech about what interests "the media" and what they decline to cover but his point was a good one, and goes directly to why our system of government is in grave danger.


A judge, faced with a courtroom full of press and spectators at the arraignment of defendants charged with relatively minor tax crimes and witness tampering charges, explained in an absurdly confidential voice to the lawyers arrayed around her bench that the extraordinary interest was because the case involved sex which, incredibly, it did. Gay sex, too.

It was impossible to keep that silly scene from the past from explaining the Massa-fest this week. But, as always, there was this, too, ringing loudly in the corridors of the mind:

surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show....

If ... news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it--I say it isn't news....

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the corporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs...

Yes, the speaker was the frequently mourned CBS News Correspondent Edward R. Murrow and yes, this was the speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association in October, 1958 which he ended with these horribly prophetic words:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

And here we go again: with the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt convincing a Congress to enact social security while the powerful publisher of the Chicago Daily News was telling audiences which were interested in him opposing President Roosevelt for re-election, that he was not furthering

an American form of government [but rather] one which at every sunrise finds its administrators facing east in worship of Karl Marx

or the more recent recollection of Presidents Truman, Kennedy andJohnson urging medicare on Congress while Ronald Reagan explained that

One f the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. . . . Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it

television devotes enormous attention to Congressman Massa's "confusion" while ignoring hypocrisy and outright falsehoods being spewed by the direct descendants of those who opposed government programs almost every American now supports though takes for granted.

This view is hardly controversial on this site, nor is this the first time, or even the second, third or fourth time, it has been discussed under this name (see, for instance, this) but the "contributions" of these supposed news outlets in sowing the seeds of confusion or misinformation, all in the guise of balance, have been extraordinary.

It took a comedian to show them how to use their video files to illustrate the politician trick to say one thing one moment and then the exact opposite the next time, while claiming to have been consistent. Yet when a politician claims that "the people" don't want health care reform, twisting poll results that combine those who hate government, with those who wanted a public option and are disappointed, they are not contradicted by contrary polls, see, for instance, this, nor do they express any sense that their constant reporting of loud protests by tiny groups of tea baggers may contribute to a view that there is something fishy in the proposals before Congress.

Is this a conspiracy among broadcasters? Are they just serving corporate masters who favor Republicans? Unlikely. The need to make money now surely trumps either impulse. It is instead, the appeal to lowest common denominator, the idea that, as Murrow forecast, news as entertainment won't work, that presents us with Mourning Joe and his sidekick, the imitation of a reporter who is the offspring of Zbigniew Brzezinski or, as Vice President Gore described the whole enterprise a few weeks ago,

showmen masquerading as political thinkers

.

Showmen, such as the son of a man who produces movies and the like, who carries himself as a news correspondent, are interested in how it looks, "the visuals" as they say in television, and not issues which, as Murrow noted, can present unpleasant choices for a viewer to have to make.

"Process' has its place, to be sure. That an idea is a good one or bad one is not necessarily decisive and what Congress is likely to enact and how that might occur is surely a worthwhile issue to be explored. Had his first guest on Meet the Press last week been Rahm Emanuel or Speaker Pelosi or Senators Reid and Durbin, their explanation as to how they could achieve what they seek would have been interesting. But the guest was the Secretary of Health and Human Services who, though a former Governor was, before that, an Insurance Commissioner, and it was that expertise, about the insurance industry and the provision of health care to Kansans that led to her appointment to her current position.

Hence, while she attempted to explain a bill that television always describes as complex, all the supposed newsman wanted to talk about was the sizzle stuff. For instance

MR. GREGORY: ...here are two facts: Most people who have health insurance like what they have, and a majority of Americans oppose this president's version of healthcare reform. So how, realistically, do you get this done?

SEC'Y SEBELIUS: Well, I think, David, what we're hearing from people across America is that even people who have insurance are terrified about what's going on in the marketplace. They're opening their statements, they're seeing these incredible rate increases, if they're not protected by a large employer, going on across the country. We just got a Goldman Sachs analyst who said that the market competition is decreasing in this country, that in the individual market, in the small group market where small employers are absolutely caught, they have no choice; and they are getting increasingly frustrated. So I think we know what doing nothing looks like, and it looks pretty scary. Fifteen thousand people a day lose their insurance, and some of those folks are being actually priced out of the marketplace.

So, most people you know, Mr. Gregory, are happy with what they have, but 15,000 people a day are losing insurance and priced out of the marketplace. Naturally the next question is to repeat the premise Secretary Sibelius debunked, but minimizing its significance.

MR. GREGORY: ...Certainly, we can all talk to people who don't like their situation, who are worried or are going through very difficult times. But, again, a fact is that a majority of Americans, after everybody has said everything, as the president said, don't support this administration's version of reform.

SEC'Y SEBELIUS: Well, I think if you say, "Do you want," you know, "some massive bill," that people are a little unclear about what's in it given the amount of misinformation. They say, you know, "We don't know. We're, we're unsure." You say, "Do you want rules to change for insurance companies? Do you want them to have to compete in the marketplace? Do you want some oversight? Do you want some consumer protection?" They say absolutely yes. "Do you want a different marketplace where people can have some choice and competition just like the members of Congress have?" Absolutely yes.

You know, I had a meeting last week with five of the largest insurance company CEOs, and we talked to them about what in the world is going on, how in the world does somebody like Ms. Canfield, who the president cited, who's paying $6,000 in premiums, she's paid $4,000 out of pocket, her premiums went up 25 percent last year. The company, on her behalf--she's put $10,000 of her own money on the table. The company paid out about $900 in bills, and she just got a rate increase of 40 percent. How in the world does that work? How does that math work? And, frankly, we didn't get very good answers from the insurance companies.

So, there you are. This is the issue. This is why the polling is skewed.
Do we want to discuss how the bill would fix the problem Secretary Sibelius described?

Well...

MR. GREGORY: ... I've spoken recently to a top ally of the president on healthcare reform who thinks there's about a 40 percent chance, ultimately, of getting this done. Where do you put the odds?

SEC'Y SEBELIUS: I think we'll have the votes to pass comprehensive health reform. A bill has passed the House with a majority, a bipartisan majority. A bill has passed the Senate with a supermajority. That's never been done before. What we're talking about, as the president said, is finishing the job. And the urgency, the timetable is not about some congressional time clock, it's about what's happening across this country to Americans.

Odds. Not health care. Not massive amounts of advertising on television hoping to stop the bill. Odds. Or this curious exchange about whether the reason the President wants to get this passed is to burnish his image, since image is so much more fun to talk about:

MR. GREGORY: The issue of what's at stake here, it's very interesting, the president talked about that. The New York Post reported this on Friday--I'll put it up on the screen. "President Obama pushed wavering House members to OK health-care legislation for his own political
standing and for theirs. ... `To maintain a strong presidency, we need to pass the bill,' Obama told liberals, according to" one Arizona representative who attended the meeting. This is very interesting, "to maintain a strong presidency." Elaborate on that.

SEC'Y SEBELIUS: Well, again, I think the president has laid out comprehensive health reform as a primary agenda item not because he doesn't have good health choices or because it's easy politically, but because he feels it's fundamental to fixing the economy and it's fundamental in terms of jobs, small...

MR. GREGORY: It's fundamental to having "a strong presidency" is what he's reported to have said.

SEC'Y SEBELIUS: Well, I wasn't in that room. What I can tell you what--is what he's said...

MR. GREGORY: But you work with him closely. Are the stakes that high? Is his agenda in peril if he doesn't get this? Is that what's at stake?

SEC'Y SEBELIUS: Well, I think what's in peril is health security for millions of Americans. What's in peril is the fact that small business owners currently are having to choose between hiring another worker or two or having health insurance. They're losing employees to folks down the street who have bargaining power. We have folks absolutely caught in jobs that they hate. They are terrified about leaving their position. We are--actually have a handicap in the economy because we haven't fixed this massive health insurance system, and we've got to tackle that. And I think that's what the president understands.

The purpose of this post was not to pick on Gregory. He is not significantly different than his colleagues, though his predecessors, Russert, Utley, Newman and Spivak, especially, would have had a better sense of balance. But, except for Russert, they all operated in different times. Murrow's message did not lead to change (although it did lead to PBS). Instead it was a forecast of something dire which has sadly come true beyond, more than likely, Murrow's greatest fears.