Editorial / TV's Debauch
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIAL TV's DEBAUCH by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. As the dirty-necked primitives of the Holy Man Khomeini were hauling Jimmy Carter across the last agonies of his hostage ordeal, National Public...
...What is more, they had placed camera crews in the homes of many of the hostages' relatives, thus allowing devoted TV audiences to savor every gush of emotion...
...Here too is a familiar line of reasoning, namely: that the American people are more dangerous than their enemies...
...As the dirty-necked primitives of the Holy Man Khomeini were hauling Jimmy Carter across the last agonies of his hostage ordeal, National Public Radio (NPR) was off interviewing American flagellants still walloping themselves and us for Vietnam and the furbish lousewort...
...Instead it allowed itself to be manipulated by the administration with melodramatic symbols: darkened Christmas trees, yellow ribbons, those avalanches of Christmas cards supposedly flowing into our diplomats' cells...
...There, the stars of TV news went into deep consultation with psychiatrists...
...Its treatment of the hostages' release reached a new low in tastelessness and triviality...
...After the first takeover of the Embassy the administration ignored the brutal nature of the Iranian regime, acting as though Andy Young's depiction of Khomeini as a saint was the inside dope necessary for understanding Iran...
...Such stories do not fit into the ideological scheme of NPR or the razzle-dazzle format of TV news...
...In the personl confessional mode that is still so popular she told us all about her latest geopolitical feelings and about how America has been made stronger by resigning itself to its weakness-a familiar piece of 1970s ratiocination, that...
...I doubt it...
...After the decision to admit the Shah the administration still made no adjustment to reality...
...NPR was, as usual, idiotic, but TV news coverage of the hostages' release was idiotic too...
...Adapted from RET's Monday column in the Washington Post...
...For over a year the winsome commentators scowled and intoned ironies and sweet sentiments...
...Its news shows always echo with voices-sometimes supercilious, sometimes oh so precious-reminding Americans of their brutal past and reproaching them for any lapse into national seriousness...
...Finally, NPR interviewed a young man who simply bawled...
...Possibly he had been asked to recite the Pledge of Allegiance...
...Possibly someone had stolen his rubber duck...
...Then the news seeped out about torture, and the affair soured...
...The shrinks were called in to give us a neat understanding of the mysteries of hostagedom, and, I might add, to allow the busybodies access to someone else's misery...
...Their audience was left feeling that these things just happen...
...Robert Garwood revealed the bestial treatment of our POWs, and only the newspaper stories conveyed any sense of the horror...
...As our imprisoned diplomats departed Iran the stars of TV news were all anticipating a happy ending...
...When they are in a particularly mischievous humor they bring in a TV crew...
...Network television is egregious because it is so pretentious and inane...
...National Public Radio is our government-supported organ for 1960s youth culture, and as year begets year it will provide a fascinating view of the continuing juvenescence of a singular American subculture that was full of arrested adolescents to begin with...
...Whom the gods would destroy they first present with a microphone...
...There was an overstrung lady voice that stammered along about how improved America is now that it has suffered its recent indignities...
...All that the shrinks and the camera crews provided was gossip and excitement, which is, of course, the heart of broadcast journalism...
...TV News never critically examined the implications of this diplomatic disaster...
...Following the second takeover the administration merely emboldened the Iranians by immediately eschewing force and taking the appeaser's path...
...Imagine, they reported the Iranians' outrages every night and never seemed to anticipate the import of their barbarism...
...Then there was a learned prof who lectured against harboring any uncharitable thoughts toward our tormentors lest we encourage fresh outbreaks of Manifest Destiny...
...It was going to be another great moment in the saga of TV journalism...
...I tried like a good Christian to ascertain the cause of his sadness, but got nowhere...
...It would be a moment of stupendous authenticity...
...During the last weeks of the hostage ordeal the testimony in the trial of Pvt...
...It would also be stupendously irrelevant to our understanding of the hostages' release...
...Hours and hours were lavished upon the spectacle...
...With Ronald Reagan's inauguration but a few hours off, and the idiot Iranians ravening for their last glories before Reagan and Alexander Haig wiped the prissy smile from Uncle Sam's face, the voices of NPR were full of loony mission...
...Apparently it is incapable of treating any event, no matter how tragic, with dignity and intelligence...
...The trivializing influence of the broadcast media is one of the salient characteristics of our age...
...The cameras were focused on the hostages' relatives to give us a taste of the happy moment, and, I might add, to allow the busybodies to eavesdrop and to satisfy other base impulses...
...When NPR president Frank Mankiewicz frantically leaps to the defense of NPR as he always does, I hope his letter to us will explain these ludicrous utterances...
...Apparently, no one had spit in her food recently or forced her to play Russian roulette...
...This is the kind of soap opera that TV relishes...
...The ordeal over the hostages has been a unique national tragedy, brought on by a series of incomparable diplomatic blunders by the Carter administration...
...TV land is not a medium congenial to realism or even reality...
...The thing remains a mystery...
...Will the media journalists be sobered up by these revelations...
...NPR is egregious because it is so pretentious and ideological...
...Never very quick to convey the disturbing side of life, the commentators seemed utterly oblivious to the brutality of the Holy Man's mobs...
...It is this fear that prompted the Carter administration to deny early reports of Iranian atrocities against our diplomats, though the Wonder-boy now professes to be shocked by these stories...
...Now the entire Middle East is a more dangerous place...
Vol. 14 • March 1981 • No. 3
