So much news

New York City had so many newspapers when I was growing up.  My dad preferred the Journal American, an evening paper and my aunts, his sister Mina and his Aunt Gen, gravitated to the Daily News or the Mirror, their screaming headlines in the largest fonts possible with page after page of photos and exclamation points. The Daily News or the Mirror, often both, pots of tea and plates of Dugan’s crumb cake formed the brain trust of Swanton and Smithwick women that debated world and city affairs in Aunt Mina’s kitchen.

I loved the Journal American not only for its comic pages but also for the crossword puzzle that was such big a challenge for a young girl. It was not an uncommon evening when I would pepper my father with questions about possible answers and from that search, along with our dictionary, my vocabulary grew. I read the articles too, often not quite understanding the stories because I was only in grade school, but they lead me to other questions that helped me comprehend not only the stories themselves but also what a journalist was, how the accuracy was mediated by research, the choice of words, the tone and, too often, the editorial policy of the newspapers.

In my junior year in high school, my social studies teacher, Herbert Moore, required that we purchase a subscription to one of two New York papers, either the Times or the Tribune. We also had to subscribe to a weekly newsmagazine, Time or Newsweek.

With the advice of my dad, I chose the Tribune and Time.

We were quizzed often about the content in these publications, about the veracity, the tone, even the placement of a piece, whether on the front page or elsewhere.  We attempted to identify the editorial slants and when we compared how each handled the same event, we became acutely aware of the difference that research, wording, tone, placement and editorial slant made.

My gosh, Mr. Moore even quizzed us on the ads. He was teaching us to become critical consumers. We could easily see how the press can skew, even create “facts” that can influence how you see the world.

From the yellow journalism of the Hearst papers that created what became the Spanish-American War to the excellent work of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post that broke the story of Watergate leading to the first resignation of a president, we learned of the power of the press,  of the need for a free and honest press as a foil for those who are not honest and a prod to alert us to those who would make us less free.

We learned to apply that to other media, casting our critical eye at television news programs during a time when there were real news programs on television,  when newsmen like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow brought us less varnished versions of the events of the day, when at one time,  Walter Cronkite was deemed to be the most trusted man in the country.

There was a time when I read both of the Syracuse papers every day. They were, at one point, different papers, often covering different stories.  My jobs brought me into contact with many of the reporters, people whose devotion to good reporting was never questionable.

They had plenty of things to question,  from their use of the language to personal peccadillos, but they all, at least the ones I knew wanted to present their stories without prejudice.

I watched as the change happened, how social media, a source of conflated, politically engineered and very often false news, began to become the Fourth Estate, to slowly but surely drive both the print and electronic media into extinction. Newspapers disappeared.  TV news became “entertainment.” News became outrageous claims masquerading as headlines in Facebook or 140 character tweets skewering the opposition.

So, last Sunday, while checking out the 15 things I bought at Nojaims when I went in for only two, I noticed the New York Times, sitting right there, next to the Eagle Observer.

How many years has it been since I bought the Sunday Times? I couldn’t remember, but I did remember how much I loved getting that paper. So, I bought it.  It’s Wednesday and I haven’t finished reading it yet.  It is a feast of good writing, reporting that has little parallel and a breadth of topics that can keep you engaged for days.

The long and laudable history of the Times should make it impervious to the assaults of modern technology and its vastly tainted offspring, the social media.  The Times still relies of human grit and determination to find and share the truth.  Articles have attribution.  You know who wrote them, what their political stance is. It is an exceptional resource with impeccable credentials, lauded by those who value good reporting and accuracy.

Television is a conundrum.  There does appear to be too much editorializing rather than facts. We do watch CBS because it seems to be less inclined to produce news as entertainment.  We also watch BBC America.  Katty Kay’s take- no- prisoner interview performance reminds me of Edward R. Murrow. Neither news program is perfect, but there is hope. CNN, Fox and MSNBC are just too scary for me as a regular diet. While not entertainment, they are far too repetitive, in breaking news stories presenting off the cuff, not vetted rumors as possible facts, lacking in attribution and sometimes just too dramatic.  They call to mind the style and substance of the Daily News and the Mirror — these are, of course, personal choices, not to be taken as authoritative in any way.

For me, this all began with the Journal American and a phenomenal Social Studies teacher.

A democracy cannot function without honest journalism. We, as citizens, have the right to gather our news from wherever we choose.  Constraints on the press by the government are a contradiction of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The government and its representatives cannot, must not make those choices for us whether by statute or by insinuation.

Whether it is faux news generated in Eastern Europe, excoriation of specific reporters and newspapers, cutesy stories of cows listening to music or 140 characters of personal vitriol, they are about equal. Journalism is under attack as is our right to honesty and verifiable facts — the stuff that I learned was the news.