It must be weird to be Carl Bernstein. You're a celebrity journalist, but you're second to Bob Woodward. Not a bad gig, especially after getting a U.S. president to resign. Then what's going on here?
Newspapers are devoting fewer resources to issues of importance such as the Iraq war and potential abuses of the U.S. Constitution, the former
Washington Post reporter told students at the Brunswick School on Thursday (emphasis mine).
How did his book tour take him to Brunswick School? Does anyone know the science of figuring out where to go on book tours? Because one look at this list, and I'm clueless how it gets done. But I'm guessing that if Bernstein lives in New York, he's got a relative who attends. But isn't it weird to have him speak to a college preparatory high school about... the problems in the media? Why not talk about how to read a newspaper?
"The problems we have in news and journalism are about us not doing our job well enough," Bernstein said. "The ideal of providing the best available version of the truth is being affected by the dominance of a journalistic culture that has less and less to do with reality and context."
Should I be concerned with the fact that most high schoolers will have no idea what he's talking about? This isn't Charlie Rose.
Bernstein, 63, said he believes an "idiot culture" is partly to blame for the dysfunction of political life in the United States.
"You can't separate the appetites and demands of the people themselves and what they are given," he said. "The blame simply can't all be put at the feet of those who present news."
The more I hear this caterwauling about how media has changed for the worse, the more suspicious I become of the critique. People have always wanted more blood and sex in their news. When news was first on television, it was a snooze-fest, offered as a public service (and treated like one). Ratings went up when newscasters got serious. Higher ratings and more subscriptions mean more revenue.
So what's Bernstein's beef with paying the rent?
