Lions for Lambs Accuses the Media

I was really enthused about this movie but I wasn't able to do my usual sneak peak review of it. However, I did get around to seeing and I found myself outraged at both my profession and those who control it. In this movie, we have three scenes. We have a University of California professor (Robert Redford) and a generally good student who is all talk and no action. We have a young Republican Senator from Illinois (Tom Cruise) and a leading news reporter for a major national network (Meryl Strep). Lastly, we have two friends who decided to enlist into the military during college. These three scenes are tied together neatly and easily in the movie. The young senator has been pushing to implement a new strategy in Iraq and has called in this reporter to propose that she write the story that will help sell the solution to an unpopular war that everyone is really getting tired of. The college professor is telling the story of these college students who are so frustrated with the domestic ills that they are going to go into the military to help defend the country and end the war on terror in their own small way. The tie is that they are one of the first teams to be sent in as a part of the Senator's new strategy of small teams to root out the terrorists. The only problem is that the chopper carrying the troops is damaged throwing these two friends out the exposed aft section of the aircraft and they are eventually shot on the mountain top as they rest of the movie progresses. The college professor's point is that these guys got up and did something about what they were passionate about and taught everyone a good lesson about doing what you're passionate about. The point that the young senator from Illinois made to the reporter is what I want to focus on the most.

The point the young Senator from Illinois' point is that the media usually buys what the government tells them and that they merely report the news and then when it seems that everything isn't adding up they finally ask questions about what happened. His point is that the media is the government's best tool to sell what they want and that the media that prides itself on questioning everything really doesn't question anything that comes out of the halls of power. In College media we all prided ourselves on asking the tough questions and that working for the college newspaper was out first step to getting to the bottom of things and that we were going to build careers on tough questions. What happened to that passion? What happened to that drive to get to the bottom of things? Why did we all sell out to the "rulebook of things you don't talk about." In the movie the reporter talks about her days at her liberal college newspaper and her first days of reporting in 1968. When the Senator calls it a liberal rag, she claims that she "never lost her taste for it" but didn't she? What I enjoyed most about the movie was how she realized how profit driven the news media and how the news media is a tool for the government and a business' attempt and making some more money. News is no longer about reporting what is going on and pointing out all the things that make sense and all the things that don't, its about ratings and what can get people to tune in.

What I find that is even worse is that even those of us online, the so-called "new media" promised people the same thing, we promised questions and we promised scrutiny. But how many times do we merely report what is going on and fail to point out the fallacies? How often do we ask the tough questions? How often do we actually do for free what the news media is paid to do? I have to admit that even I do not always ask the toughest questions or really scrutinize something as far as it really could be. The media has abdicated its right to be the 4^th estate and the new media has done no better. You would think that now that everyone can get their idea and opinion out there that by fiat we would have the tough questions. But somewhere, even out here on-line money and ads got in the way and we want articles that will generate ad revenue and I think we are no better than the network people in New York, the only differences is that they have offices and we work at the kitchen table.

So what is the remedy? How do we return the media that exposed meat packing plants and exposed Watergate, told the public about what was really going on in Vietnam. I hope that all of us in the media, especially the online new media will take this movie and the questions it poses to the American media and take them to heart.