POST CRONKITE

Not surprisingly, Sunday Morning devoted their entire show to Walter Cronkite - they are a CBS show, he was a CBS icon - but I don’t see any of that non-stop, floor-to-ceiling, ubiquitous media coverage that accompanied Michael Jackson’s death. Why is that, I wonder?

Do you suppose it’s because Walter Cronkite couldn’t sing, didn’t dance much, and couldn’t walk backward while appearing to walk forward? Is it because he hadn’t sold tens of millions of albums, wasn’t spectacularly rich, and didn’t spend a fortune on a private theme park and under-the-table prescription drugs? Or was it because he was married to the same woman for 65 years and widely regarded as “the most trusted man in America” rather than being a dysfunctional, reclusive pop star and alleged pedophile?

No, I don’t think it's any of those things. I think the broadcast news media, of which Cronkite was not only a part but an originator, has lost its bearings, preferring to chase advertising dollars rather than follow meaningful stories, exchanging their integrity for ratings along the way.

The real loser, of course, is the public. Without a reliable source of information – and that excludes Face Book, Twitter, and Wikipedia – democracy is an illusion. If President Obama is truly concerned about the health of the naiton, he would do well to turn his attention to the news media.