Before taking up the question of what the mainstream media must do to win back the confidence of the American people, Bill Katz’s most recent post for us returned to the the subject of the Tonight Show. Bill’s first two contributions to Power Line were “Learning from The Tonight Show” and “Learning from The Tonight Show, part 2.” This morning he continues his discussion of the mainstream media:
Part 1 of this essay proposed three steps the media must take to win back the respect of the American people: First, news organizations must finally reconcile with the Vietnam War, openly reexamine their coverage of that war, and concede where serious mistakes were made. Second, they must confront their own glib approach to abortion, and how their attitude alienated millions of readers and viewers. Third, they must drop the silly, lordly idea of an “adversarial relationship” with government, choosing instead the neutral stance more suited to a democracy. Americans prefer a watchdog to an attack dog.
Now, FOURTH: The media must purge itself of a word. I recall, as a kid in 1954, watching the grainy black-and-white images of the Army-McCarthy hearings on our 12-inch DuMont. A term was being invented
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