The public loved us most in November, when flags rippled on the corners of TV screens and from on-camera lapels. Journalists were asking few tough questions regarding civilian bombing casualties and civil liberties, and the American military was rolling to a stunning victory in Afghanistan. Despite the tragedy of Sept. 11, we had a lot of good news to cover, and even pieces on the tragic aspects of the story seemed to forge a common sense of outrage and purpose. The more thorny elements tended to be put aside until a later day.
This spring and summer, that day came. The triumphant story ran its course, and the what-really-happened story began to be covered, with disquieting results. We started to get reports that there were significant civilian casualties, and serious questions began to be raised about the wisdom of an invasion of Iraq. Darkening the news atmosphere further were the stories of Enron Corp., Global Crossing, and the betrayal of shareholders. The market fell. The news from the Middle East had seldom been worse. These past six months have not been a happy time on the news pages.
There was a stretch of time there when surprisingly good things were happening, from an American point of view. A string of military successes surprised us, and that made good news. But the general rule is that "No news is good news" because most good news isn't surprising enough to make the cut. For the simple reason that the construction of a house takes half a year, but it can burn down in the thousandth part of that time.So, has the public simply returned to its pre-9/11 attitude when the press returned to its normal adversarial role as the news itself turned bad? When the lapdog turned back into a watchdog?
The dirty little secret is that the press' "normal role" is adversarial toward the government only when the government protects prosperity and prosperous people. Let the government harass the prosperous and/or claim to help "the poor" at the expense of "the rich, and journalism is a lapdog.Journalists smugly call that "afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted." But We-the-people understand that whoever is powerful enough to do those things is himself "powerful" indeed.