The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!
Interpretation
This quote highlights the power of the media and the responsibility that comes with it, warning against the neglect of that responsibility.
Carl Bernstein emphasizes the significant influence that media holds in contemporary society and criticizes the tendency of journalists to neglect their ethical obligations. He suggests that this failure to uphold responsibility results in a culture that promotes ignorance and superficiality, which he refers to as 'idiot culture.' Bernstein's words serve as a call to action for journalists to recognize the weight of their role in shaping public discourse and to act responsibly in exercising their power.
In practice
During a panel discussion on the role of media in society, one could quote this to emphasize the need for responsible journalism.
The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.
The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.
The most important ethical issues and the most difficult ones are the human ones because a reporter has enormous power to hurt people.
If you are a great news organization, you can't have the best obtainable version of the truth if your vision and your scale is reduced to a fraction of its former self.
The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.
The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.
I suppose popularity is measured by ratings. If a broadcaster is known as the leader because of ratings, then that's where people most want to be seen and heard, so there's no question that there's an advantage.
The news as entertainment is the real danger, because the truth or accuracy of what it is reporting becomes irrelevant.
The reporting of news has to be understood as propaganda for commodities, and events by images.
I can swear on a stack of Bibles that not once in doing the 'CBS Evening News' for 19 years - well, I take it back. Once perhaps. But during 19 years, with perhaps one exception, was I ever aware of any political or commercial pressure on that broadcast whatsoever.
Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.
The newspaper offers something very different from Google's aggregators. It offers a value system, an idea of what matters in the world. Newspapers need to start articulating that value.
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