The Media's Price on Morality
In 1896, an era of sensationalized and hyperpartisan journalism, Adolph Ochs purchased The New York Times. Addressing the readers of what he envisioned becoming the paper of record – and in a clear rebuke of financier efforts to exert editorial influence – Ochs wrote that it would be his “earnest aim to … give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interest involved.”
Such a commitment today would be little more than marketing copy or public relations hype from many of America’s once-independent, ethical, and respected news sources. How very far the champions of the First Amendment have fallen and, with them, the security and stability of our democracy.
In the same week that we saw Donald Trump attempt to make a win out of the horrifying and tragic murders of Rob and Michele Reiner, that twisted vulgarian was given primetime access on all three major television networks to lie direct-to-camera to the American people. Only two days later, Trump’s Department of Justice – and I do mean it belongs to Trump – once again betrayed its name by denying, or at least impeding, justice for the women and girls who were sex-trafficked and abused by pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his wealthy, powerful pals. It’s under the same power and weight of obscene wealth that we see traditional media collapsing. The obvious influence of billionaire owners and financiers, and self-serving C-suite executives, is the farthest imaginable from Ochs’s vision of journalism “without fear or favor.”
In its latest capitulation, CBS appears to have prioritized currying favor with the Administration over the tough, necessary investigative journalism that made 60 Minutes a north star of holding the powerful to account for decades. The deeply researched, fully produced, widely promoted, and legally vetted story on the Trump Administration’s illegal flight of Venezuelans from the US to El Salvador’s torture prison was pulled just hours before it was set to air, with the thinnest of thin explanations. This is deeply troubling, though not surprising with CBS now under the direction of Bari Weiss.
https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/the-medias-price-on-morality