First, a quick fix, in the form of Kurt Vonnegut on the Daily Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI-jlbyDf0k

Second, yesterday I had, and took, the opportunity to see Tom Brokaw give a talk. At first I was impressed by his poise and candor; he spoke with great openness on any subject presented to him (by Eric Schmidt, of Google). However, when the talk proceeded to the Q&A phase, it quickly degenerated. One of the hot topics facing the media today is whether or not those who are dispensing the news are doing so with impartiality; I've heard Rush Limbaugh talk with as much vehemence as Jon Stewart - and using much the same language - on the topic of whether or not the media lives and breathes scratchy toady breaths under the thumb of political parties.

However, when asked whether various facets of the media are simply telling their corresponding audiences what they want to hear, he just answered that today's consumers of the news have a great deal to choose from, and must be more discriminating than viewers past. This is a valid enough point. But when the question was rephrased, when Brokaw was asked whether the media itself was living up to its end of the bargain (of, in this case, presenting accurate information that viewers must sort through and interpret as they will), he was incredibly dodgy.

I suppose one can chalk that sort of behavior up to taking care of one's own. As an active member of the team of Big Names in the tv news sky, Brokaw has a right to believe that the people he works with are Doing the Best that they Can. It is also, to a degree, admirable not to engage in the bitter debate between the extreme news left (Steven Colbert, perhaps) and the extreme news right (Fox News, anyone?), when little ever comes of such a dispute other than name calling and tattletaling. But there was a sense, in the room in which I was sitting, of palpable anxiety, a thirst for information and for an actual opinion. The question was being asked about newscasters and newspapermen at large - the NY Times, not the Onion; BBC Nightly News, not The Colbert Report. Are these women and men fulfilling their responsibility to present the public with impartial and important information? And, perhaps more importantly, are they searching for it?

Reading over what I've written here, I have too agree with Brokaw to some degree: the news is not just a pill we have to pop, it's the story of the world, and that's bound to take some sifting through. My main frustration was, and remains, that he did not acknowledge that part of the responsibility falls on those people who are presenting the news: they have chosen that life, it is, in the best of cases, their calling and their passion. So the fight for better news reporting should be also theirs, and they should own it.