Post Buyouts Come With an Emotional Cost

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 26, 2008;

No one need shed any tears for the people leaving this building. The more than 100 journalists who have just taken early-retirement packages are voluntarily accepting a generous offer as the company trims its payroll — a situation far better than at newspapers that have resorted to layoffs.

But it is painful to watch from the inside. The talented reporters, editors and photographers walking out the door are part of the heart and soul of a living, breathing organism. How do you replace a Tom Ricks, one of the best Pentagon reporters ever? Or a Sue Schmidt, the investigative reporter who revealed Jack Abramoff’s dirty dealings? Or Robin Wright, who’s covered the Middle East for a quarter-century? What about battle-scarred editors with deep knowledge and a light touch?

But — and stop me if you’ve heard this one — newspapers matter. There isn’t a Web site around that can produce the probing work, such as the exposé of shoddy conditions at the Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center, that won The Post six Pulitzer Prizes this year. The economics of the Web, for now, won’t support a staff that can hold public officials accountable across the region and still cover every Nationals game. So I cling to an old-fashioned, almost mystical belief in the power of ink on paper. MUCH MORE

I grieve for the collapse of America’s print media and the slashing of investigative reporters, albeit for a different reason than Howard Kurtz; less investigative reporters equates to less investigations, which aids the propaganda machine of the Neo-cons and fascists who are intent on taking-over the United States. America’s MSM, in print and on camera, have betrayed the American people - and it is the Editor’s and owners of each of those entities who carry the blame, not the Internet or the people! We read your newspapers and watch the nightly news in an effort to understand what is happening to our nation, yet nothing of consequence is ever published as corporate America tightens the noose around our necks and is literally squeezing the life out of the Average American!

We are saddled with the worst President this nation has ever witnessed, and now we can firmly and accurately blame it on the MSM, not the political savvy of Carl Rove. Rove certainly added to Bush’s election and subsequent re-election, but it was the Mainstream News Media that carries the blame, and now the truth has been revealed! It was their cowardice and what I believe teetered on criminal enabling of the current administration that has brought America to its knees from the standpoint of our economy and freedom(s) - and Americans will not forget your culpability in refusing to provide unbiased news and reporting, which has always been the mainstay of this democracy, but is now littered with enablers and traitors of the American Dream!

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is one of the main culprits, but others have also given in to their corporate masters, and now our news is a reflection of what they want us to believe, which is a far stretch from the reality that is crashing-in on the average American. How sad is it that I have to quote Russia’s Pravda to offer an assessment of Fox’s culpability in Bush’s election? Why isn’t this headlined on the American MSM - and the answer to that is why so many jobs and positions are being cut - we cannot trust the our own news, and that’s a sad day for any hope that America will adhere to truth and accountability as it pertains to our so-called “news media.”

Most Americans do not even think about getting information from alternative news sources

The US most popular TV channel Fox News has been beaten by CNN for the first time during the last seven years. Preferences of US citizens were affected by the media reporting of the election campaign and the country’s foreign policy. Twelve million TV viewers preferred the ‘objective’ CNN to Fox News that justifies George Bush’s policy.

In April 2008 the CNN audience counted 62 million people, while Fox News had only 50 million TV viewers, Handelsblatt reports. According to US media experts, the reason for this change is the information policy run by the competing TV channels. “CNN has beaten all the TV channels by the quality of its programs concerning the elections,” said Joe Cuthbert, a professor of the Department of Journalism of the Columbia University in the City of New York.

Fox News, a part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, engaged in one-sided advocacy of the stance of the current US administration, instead of providing all-round objective reports of election campaigns. Economists proved that George Bush would have never won the 2000 election but for the support from Fox News. The TV channel definitely backs up right-wing Republicans, Cuthbert considers. “Fox is rather the advocate of Bush’s government than a news TV channel. Now the political ship is sinking, and so is Fox.” (Emphasis added.) MORE

It’s bad enough that Faux News published propaganda rather than fact in promoting the Bush Presidency, but we did have a chance of throwing-out Bush and Cheney, and the N.Y Times held the “smoking gun”, but rather than alert the public before the 2004 Presidential elections, the “NY Crimes” decided to hold its sensational story in regard Bush illegally wiretapping America until after the election was over, and once again, we can place the blame squarely on a complicit and cowardly MSM for refusing to show the courage and dedication our news media used to have, but along with many of our constitutional rights, are now a matter of history rather than being embedded in ethical journalism, which is now only a memory…

Cry us a river Mr. Kurtz, but until the Washington Post and the rest of the Mainstream News Media step up to the plate and start reporting “real news” rather than what their corporate masters approve of, you and others that have betrayed the confidence of the American people will also feel the pain of losing your jobs and joining the rest of us as we try to live in a country that no longer resembles the beacon of freedom and democracy that was one respected throughout the world!

William Cormier

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