Even overshadowing the killing of the Berlin Christmas Market terrorist in Italy, this morning the big news was Trump's Tweet, threatening Russia with a new nuclear arms race.
And, so, on this morning's Today Show, Matt Lauer dusted off his journalist's cap and interviewed Trump's future press secretary. Lauer tried to get him to admit that such Tweets might be dangerous. Never mind that some might see a tweeting president as a somewhat frivolous and undignified personna on a world stage.
But why would this trouble Lauer? My wife and I can remember when the first hour of the Today Show was devoted to reporting real news and Lauer thought of himself as a real newscaster... maybe even a real journalist. But the Today Show, like so much else on TV, has sold out to infotainment. That he, a once serious reporter, is reduced to interviewing the future president's future press secretary about a Tweet is emblematic of the depths to which political discourse has sunk in 21st century America. It would all be hilarious if it weren't for those thousands of nuclear warheads.
And, yet again, the so-called news media and the so-called politicians prove the point I have been repeating since the turn of the new century: it falls to higher education to seek and disseminate the truth. Universities must be the guardians of civil rights and civil liberties. Most of the news media have abrogated this role, like Lauer, for the bigger ratings and paychecks that infotainment has to offer, while Trump and his Twitter account have taken lying by politicians to an all-time low.
Our campuses must be the monasteries of the new Dark Age.
No comments:
Post a Comment