Remember when a journalist would ask some pompous ass a difficult question and they would fumble around trying to answer it? Remember when the person being interviewed would get mad and say “this interview is over?”
We used to have journalists like that in the main stream press. They would ask corporate giants about the corrupt practices they had. The might ask a serious question about an incident in the war and the big shots getting interviewed would start to squirm with anticipation waiting to get caught with their “paws in the cookie jar.”
One of those people was Mike Wallace and he died last Saturday. For the longest time he was on 60 minutes, the news magazine that actually questioned members of the status quo. I used to learn a lot from that program. There were a few pieces I disagreed with, but it wasn’t filled with fluff such as movie star interviews and health tips.
I also used to watch Night Line. Now it is just fluff with the likes of “Dancing With The Stars” or some other useless bullshit. I can’t help wondering who the next generation of hard core investigative journalist will emerge to take the place of Mike Wallace, or Edward R. Murrow or other such journalists. I don’t see that kind of journalism at all today so I really worry that we just don’t have people like that on TV anymore.
For a full Obit click on CBS News.
The article points out,
“Wallace had such a fearsome reputation as an interviewer that "Mike Wallace is here to see you" were among the most dreaded words a newsmaker could hear.”
He was an actual journalist in the sense he didn’t give his own point of view. He let his subjects do the talking. Here at this blog we practice “gonzo” or “activist” journalism, where we don’t pretend to be giving both sides. We are as truthful as we possible can be, but we feel it’s not our job to do that. But I’m grateful for the journalists who have done that. We need people like that today and we just don’t have them.
Mike Wallace will be missed by many of us. -សតិវ អតុ
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