On a Tangent...

"Never have I seen such lions led by such lambs," Robert Redford said in the film Lions for Lams, quoting a German general commenting on the British Army during World War I. Redford said the quote was the reason for the title of the movie.

In the last column I talked about how missing class for ditch-sake does a disservice to your ethos as a person. This time I will explain how the "lambs," have created havoc in the media industry and is nearly strangling it to death. This is represented in the film by the relationship between the the journalis Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) and the Senator James Irving (Tom Cruise).

He says that the fall of the papers started out after the Watergate Scandal. The newspaper world "was on a high" (Redford plays Bob Woodward in the movie All the Presidents Men) and journalists really felt they could change the world.

The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein caught President Richard Nixon cheating and proved to the American citizens that the First Amendment works.

In the commentaries on the DVD special of All the President's Men, both shared concerns that Watergate would have never been published today because today's publishers don't have the backbone to stand by the reporters like Katherine Graham did in the 1970's. Graham took all the notes from "Woodstein" as the Post's editor, Ben Bradlee called them, she would be the one that went to jail for the paper, not Woodstein. Since then, in my opinion, papers have never made as much of an impact to the order and operations of government.

Redford went on to talk about Kay Fanning. Fanning gave up being heiress to the Marshall Field's Company, had an affair with an editor at a Chicago paper, and went on with her own career as an editor of the Alaska Daily News. Woodward said this paper "kicked the [expletive] out of the other paper" in Anchorage, AK the other paper, according to Redford, was a corrupt and pro Pipeline paper. Then Fanning became the editor of Christian Science Monitor, and in the late 1980's, she called up Redford and said that her paper was being market shared. Redford's concerns were that, "we would see box office and sports scores on the front page rather hard news."

This is roughly the same time USA Today shows up. This is where he feels the good old gumshoe journalism died, and where the willful ignorance started for many people to not care. This is where I feel we start seeing corperate media, owners, not editors dictating the news. Just look at Rupert Murdoch and the memos he has sent to reporters, please excuse me while I gag, on FOX News. These memos say how the story should be covered.

Gordon Macnab (1906 - 2006), my grandfather, who was the Associated Press bureau chief in Portland, Ore would be turning in his grave. My other grandfather, Frank M, White (1916 - 2002), longtime writer for Life magazine and former member of the O.S.S. (precursor to the CIA), spent eight year as bureau chief for Life in Paris, France. White once ate diner with Ho Chi Minh, where, as my grandfather's story goes, Ho Chi Minh said, "I want a Jeffersonian Democracy, cigars, and bubblegum," or something like that; Frank White has a history of telling elaborate stories; I believe them.

As someone with the blood of journalism running through my veins, I am worried.

There is a solution, though. Redford and I both agree on how we can fix this problem of fighting the iron wall of public relations surrounding the troubled areas where administrators clam up; start up a neighborhood newspaper, start covering the problems that may plague the area and start circulating the public opinion in a grassroots approach.

Onto a complete, yet somewhat related tangent, and also wrap-up the conversation with Robert Redford. He is planning to make a film from the book, Against All Enemies, by Richard Clarke, who was the terrorist czar that "blew the whistle," on deaf ears at the time, about the 9/11 attacks. However, the White House denied Clarke's information. "I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11...your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed." Clark said after the attacks, during the 9/11 Commission.

The only problem is that Redford is concerned that the studios won't green-light the film for production because he feels that, "the Studios are not the most courageous place the world."

He also said that the current Writers Guild strike and possible Screen Actors Guild strike slated for June would also "take the business away." ... But I digress.