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All In is a place for everyone who works at NCPR to share behind the scenes activity, and surprising, curious, lovely or distinctly local tidbits from our travels around the region. We’ll post the best of what we find online, too. From time to time, you may hear from others—if you’d like to write an entry, send it to [email protected]. What makes this place what it is? How do we connect to each other and the world? That’s what ALL IN is all about.
None!
My choice, Murrow, Edward R., perhaps the last of the intellectual newsmen. He and his producer, Friendly, Fred W., footed the publicity costs, themselves, for the “See It Now” broadcast special “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy”. Many if not most historians are convinced that broadcast initiated the rapid decline of the McCarthy campaign to ferret out “the Reds” and to his (McCarthy) censure (it was called a condemnation) by the Senate likely leading to his untimely death at age 48 from liver failure most likely brought on by alcoholism.
Where was America’s equivalent to Edward R. Murrow when G W Bush and company were doing even more vile things, in the same vein, “to save us from THEM”?
Who is the Murrow equivalent today who does not pander to the hype addicted adolescent semi-adults populating this county (and others) at the behest of the Corporate Lords?
One could list quite a few journalists from the heyday of CBS News in the 50s and 60s who would fall into the “journalist I trust” camp – Marvin Kalb and Daniel Shore immediately come to mind.
Glenn Greenwald. He speaks truth to power and pulls no punches. If we had a few more like him, we would have what we need: an adversarial press.
Siegel. Siegel! Robert Siegel! I could listen to him all day long. I’d love to have him host some kind of interview/magazine program. The brief chats he gets to do on ATC are gems of the broadcast art (I’m an NPR junkie — Can you tell?). After all this time I still miss my daily fix of Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, and Noah Adams, but when Robert Siegel is on mike, I’m contented. NPR has a staff of great field reporters as well. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton knocks me out, as does Sylvia Poggioli — what stylish and forceful reporting they do! Those women bring us news of the other hemisphere (as do several other NPR greats), and that is important as far as original North American broadcasting goes because NPR is the only game in town for that part of the world. It’s almost painful to omit the dozens of other NPR anchors and reporters, but, moving on to print and web…
For hardcore opinion, I put my bets on Glenn Greenwald, Joan Walsh, Dahlia Lithwick, David Brooks, …, … .
And yes, of course: Daniel Shorr! Speaking of Murrow, Shorr was one of the original “Murrow Boys.” I was going to express regret about his passing, but with checking out at age 93 and being active right to end, I can’t claim to be cheated! Compared to the heady days of CBS wartime radio, I think it’s harder nowadays to distinguish oneself as a great journalist.
Honestly, I listen to very little news because I really have little trust in any of the news anchors. The party affilation of the anchors is pretty obvious! This goes for the right and left.
Trust? Interesting concept. Generally speaking, I trust everyone. I base this upon the give them enough rope playbook. See how things play out. Be cautious but not to the point where you think everyone is out to get you.