MarkLimacher.com

I’ve been rather perplexed by the wishy-washy Walter Cronkite coverage since his death on July 17th, mainly the air of self-congratulation emanating from every so-called journalist when expressing their hyper-sentimentalisms of his passing.
My personal favorite was Katie Couric’s bizarre July 21st coverage of a correction issued by the New York Times. The Times was rectifying an article published shortly after his death that contained 7 factual errors. Albeit that such a high degree of factual inaccuracy in a brief obituary is incredibly amusing, I remain very confused about the importance Couric tries to fashion around the story.
When she invokes the phrase “…but I had to smile, albeit a tad ruefully, and I think he would too…”¹ she performs the journalistic equivalent of trying to imbue a series of stones with magical properties².

Two things of late have demanded a certain reflection on this matter. The first of which is the John Pilger compilation of investigative journalism pieces, Tell Me No Lies³. As I continue working my way through this book I am made aware of the ignominious quality of the journalism that totally comprises the mainstream today, and also of how devastating this is to our contemporary understanding of history. Be it the Martha Gellhorn piece Dachau that opens the anthology, to James Cameron’s The Atomic Plague, to Pilger’s own Year Zero, each lengthy account of the most confident investigative reporting reads like an account of some mythical time period, a modern day Atlantis legend where reporters went about writing in detail about matters that actually affect humanity. How we have not collectively shaped our outrage into action regarding the state of the current 4th estate should deeply shame each and every one of us.
The second thing that has caused said reflection is the Glenn Greenwald article Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did, (sent to me by none other than eb, a commenter on the site and contributor of sorts) from Salon. Greenwald discusses the dissociative nature of the mainstream media’s coverage of Cronkite’s death, by tying in his recollection of similar sentiments surrounding David Halberstam’s death two years ago. In both instances he claims that the media used these opportunities to equate their current practices with those of Cronkite or Halberstam. Based on my own observations, this is unequivocally the case.

Couric’s use of time on national newscast to cover the correction story, and to contextually imply that Cronkite would have carried himself with the same journalistic integrity as Couric in such an instance, inspires such thorough disgust in me that I cannot describe. Reportage of a New York Times correction is what passes as a hard-hitting scoop nowadays? Are you fucking kidding me? Couric’s soiree with the US Military back in 2007 was so jammed full of sugary-sweet mouthpiecery that I wept for my lack of dental coverage. For her to carry on like that about “…Getting it first, but getting it right…”⁴ is infantile and a violent affront to my intelligence.

Greenwald quotes extensively from an article by Lewis Lapham from September of ’08, regarding the death (and masturbatory media coverage) of Tim Russert who, unlike a Cronkite or a Halberstam, is not of the same journalistic ilk. I feel the following excerpt of Lapham’s piece could not be a more fitting way to close.

On television the voices of dissent can’t be counted upon to match the studio drapes or serve as tasteful lead-ins to the advertisements for Pantene Pro-V and the U.S. Marine Corps. What we now know as the “news media” serve at the pleasure of the corporate sponsor, their purpose not to tell truth to the powerful but to transmit lies to the powerless. Like Russert, who served his apprenticeship as an aide-de-camp to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, most of the prominent figures in the Washington press corps (among them George Stephanopoulos, Bob Woodward, and Karl Rove) began their careers as bagmen in the employ of a dissembling politician or a corrupt legislature. Regarding themselves as de facto members of government, enabling and codependent, their point of view is that of the country’s landlords, their practice equivalent to what is known among Wall Street stock-market touts as “securitizing the junk.” When requesting explanations from secretaries of defense or congressional committee chairmen, they do so with the understanding that any explanation will do. Explain to us, my captain, why the United States must go to war in Iraq, and we will relay the message to the American people in words of one or two syllables. Instruct us, Mr. Chairman, in the reasons why K-Street lobbyists produce the paper that Congress passes into law, and we will show that the reasons are healthy, wealthy, and wise. Do not be frightened by our pretending to be suspicious or scornful. Together with the television camera that sees but doesn’t think, we’re here to watch, to fall in with your whims and approve your injustices. Give us this day our daily bread, and we will hide your vices in the rosebushes of salacious gossip and clothe your crimes in the aura of inspirational anecdote⁵.