I can remember when radio offered commentary by expert, thoughtful broadcasters dedicated to public education. We all know what has evolved – talk radio, wherein ignorant and/or partisan and/or cynical hosts are dedicated to ratings. Sadly, this has spread to newspapers.
Years ago, most syndicated newspaper columnists brought to bear long experience, a sense of history, commitment to accuracy and fairness and a desire to advance the public dialogue. Think Lippman, Krock, Reston, Wicker.
Many still do. The Albuquerque Tribune, for example, runs Molly Ivins and Paul Krugman on the left and George Will and William Safire, rightists. Each is ideological, but each has professional qualifications and observes some democratic decencies. (We will forgive Will his favors to the Reagan White House.)
Not Linda Chavez, however. She represents the backward evolution in newspapers paralleling what happened in radio.
Take her May 4 column, "Kerry’s Record," in the Tribune. In referring to the "democratically elected government of South Vietnam," she is just plain inaccurate. As if South Vietnam was not itself created un-democratically by the US and France to foil Ho Chi Minh’s Communist-Nationalists. As if we did not impose Roman Catholic rulers on the mostly Buddhist population, followed by several military dictators.
But inaccuracy is too tiny a word for her shameful description of John Kerry, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (and a majority of Americans?) as "apologists" for the Vietnamese communists.
That is not just a huge a misstatement of history. It’s also a smear.
Now it is not news that Chavez is a partisan; her loyalty, you may remember, almost won her a cabinet position when President George W. Bush took office. (Only the revelation that she employed an illegal immigrant kept her from tasting the Secretary of Labor plum.)
But what impresses me is Chavez’s timing and that she is right "on message." The column in question comes as an echo of the RNC’s TV spots and Vice-President Chaney’s recent comments at Westminister College, both aimed at cutting Kerry to ribbons on national defense.
It’s clear the Bush re-election effort wants to bog the campaign down in the Vietnam War, the better to distract voters from the President’s war on Iraq. And to smudge Sen. Kerry’s image as a war hero, so as to make the comparison with the President’s Vietnam-dodging less sharp.
Chavez’s column, then, is a weapon in the arsenal of the Republican National Committee. But the Tribune doesn't seem to care.
Over at the Albuquerque Journal, they run columns by John Dendahl, the former New Mexico State GOP Chairman. In a pro-Bush piece April 30, he makes a passing reference to Howard Dean as an "ultra-liberal," never stopping to explain why. (Dean’s commitment to balanced budgets? His alliance with the Vermont NRA?)
This is the print equivalent of Rush Limbaugh’s name-calling and, of course, Dendahl’s stock in trade. A far cry from Lippman or Krock.
Also, the Albuquerque Journal regularly publishes highly ideological screeds from think-tank experts without identifying the biases of their institutions. Like Heather MacDonald’s article May 2 blaming the intelligence failures of 8/11 on civil libertarians. Her affiliation with the Manhattan Institute is noted, but the Journal didn't think it worthwhile to inform readers of its political bent or funding.
You see my point - we have suffered a degradation of the "marketplace of ideas."
I believe Linda Chavez and John Dendahl should be able to buy space to advertise their views. But newspapers who offer them as part of the democratic discourse seem, well, careless, at best. It’s not as if the papers have no alternative to hiring mercenaries. As Safire and Will prove, there are folks who swing from the right side of the plate who bring expertise and a rudimentary sense of fairness to the job.
Fairness? There's an idea whose time has gone...