Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?!

As the manager of the 1962 New York Mets, Casey Stengel was never at a loss for words whenever he found himself near a club reporter. After one particularly hideous loss – one of the 120 the team would endure that season – Stengel cut loose and blasted his team in the above, now infamous, quote, which was posed as a question, but which really was more a rhetorical indictment. Stengel knew the answer, as did anyone with half a brain. The Mets were dreadful and most of their roster was comprised of over the hill, washed up veterans and over rated rookies, most of whom would mercifully have a very short career in the major leagues, which reminds me of another of Stengel’s more endearing quotes. "See that fella over there? He's 20 years old. In 10 years, he's got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he's 20 years old, too. In 10 years he's got a chance to be 30."

Watching broadcast journalism these days is sort of like watching that 1962 Mets team. You can’t help but ask yourself that same rhetorical question, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” The game back then was baseball and the very best were hall of famers; the game today for our purposes is being a journalist and not simply a stenographer. Sadly most of the best are dead. Murrow, Sevareid, Cronkite, are all gone, but in reality what they brought to their industry died a long time ago. The courage and relentlessness that these legendary pioneers possessed must have been something to behold to anyone with a TV back then. With the scarcest of resources at their disposal, they probed, prodded, refuted, rebuked and challenged their sources and the powers that be until they got at what they fervently believed was the truth, caring not what others thought of them; their only concern being the integrity of the story. Television may have been in its infancy, but broadcast journalism was in its heyday. Those were the days.

Since then we have witnessed a steady and consistent collapse of this once venerable profession. Despite a plethora of technology at their disposal and the emergence of 24-hour news channels, today’s news journalists – and I use the term loosely – barely scratch the surface when they report on a story. More often than not they look more like hosts of an infomercial than investigative reporters. The last ten years have been particularly distressing to watch. The conduct of the industry during the weeks and months after 9/11 was beneath contempt as it did a complete lay down to the Bush Administration’s policy machinations. Even when it realized its complicity rather than look in the mirror and admit their wrong, they blamed it on the “mood of the country” and the “patriotic wave” that swept the nation. Five years after the United States was hoodwinked into an unjust war, MSNBC’s David Gregory still didn’t get it. "I think there are a lot of critics who think that in the run-up to the Iraq War if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role"

Then whose role is it, David? Perhaps it is the role of the multitude of twitter users who now share their deepest thoughts and concerns with Rick Sanchez of CNN so that Rick can include them in his “news” segment. That’s it! That’s the ticket. The answer was there right in front of us all along. We no longer need news professionals schooled in asking the tough questions; we now have news by committee. What’s your opinion? We’d like to know. Twitter us now and you too can have your 15 seconds of fame. The ghosts of Murrow, Sevareid and now Cronkite have been supplanted by the likes of oxfordgirl, claritybleeds and whisper1111.

Incredible, but regrettably true. The news media has now co-opted the general public to do the job it was hired to do. No need to have an informed opinion based on evidence corroborated by trustworthy sources when you can ask your viewers to chime in with their own “informed” opinions. What do you think of the recession? What’s your take on Sotomayor? How do you feel about your health care coverage?

Now there’s nothing wrong with an opinion, and everyone is entitled to voice it, but allowing it to be substituted for actual news is an affront to all that the news industry is supposed to stand for. To put it in perspective imagine for a moment the next time you went for a physical your doctor asked you for a diagnosis of your problem, or if the next time you brought your car in for an overhaul the mechanic handed you his tools and told you to get to work, what would you think? I know what I’d think. What am I paying you for?

But that is exactly what appears to be happening in the media today. Whether it’s the fact that these “news” organizations simply have too much time during the day to kill or that the people they have in their employ are not up to the challenge of being worthy news journalists, the simple and painful truth is that more and more the guy or gal in the street has more to say on the day’s relevant issues than the guardians of the microphone in the studio.

So the next time you go to Citifield or Yankee Stadium, just help yourself to a bat in the bat rack, step up to the plate and take a swing or two or three. If the umpire objects just tell him Rick Sanchez sent you; it should be OK? Who knows you might be just as good, if not better, than the “professional” on the home team. Just make sure the public address announcer gets your name right. “Now batting for the Mets, Oxfordgirl.” Certainly can’t be any worse than Marv Throneberry. After all a little viewer participation is good isn’t it? And what harm can it do?