Levels of Reportage

I think it was Michael Crichton, the writer from whose efforts sprang the Sean Connery movie of some time ago, "The First Great Train Robbery," who said that the great majority of crimes are never solved.

From that point of view, the secrecy-enshrouded "Case of the Vanished Freighter," the "Arctic Sea" -- and numerous films -- suggest to me that maybe police should be allowed to take over a crime scene only after conscientious reporters have had a look-see, provided that that species still exists.

I know that sounds crazy, and the police will have none of it, maybe at gunpoint, but the idea should not be dismissed out of hand.

Journalists have usually been to college, a place where all answers are regarded as being forever up for grabs, even if while there mostly they drank and swyved. Police usually have only gone hunting, an activity in which everything is presumed to be already known, so that mainly they drank and swore.

But the big problem, which may yet lead to the great ship of the United States running aground after all, is that reporters modeling themselves on the example of B. Woodward and C. Bernstein, the uncoverers of Watergate -- the greatest nose-to-the-ground instance of reportorial investigation in my lifetime (though some would argue with that view of things) --may all have been co-opted by their corporate employers, so that following a story wherever it may lead -- and having it published -- could now be a thing very much of the past.

This wrecking of one of the main supporting posts of democracy and the nation began to take place after the Vietnam War, when a large number of media outlets passed into the hands of corporatists who were allied with politicians, mainly conservatives, who were determined to manage the news in such ways that all information was to be given to the compliant public only after having been reduced to largely pap and along the lines of their regressive ideology. Now even the Washington Post, the paper that so proudly and doggedly carried the work of Woodward and Bernstein, has deteriorated into being little more than just one more covert shill for the political right wing.

Luckily for us there is still the Internet, though efforts are being made to put that under tight harness as well. If that's possible and if it were to happen we would really be up the creek, in "Fahrenheit 451" territory. So maybe we should all be thinking about getting our memories into the best possible working order. But that can only go so far, before everything finally dissolves into becoming pure myth.