FrancisPage

Beat The Press

I remember the first question from the first interview I ever had for a TV news producing job: "Why do you want to work in this business? The hours are bad, the pay is s#!tty -- why do it?"

I can't remember how I answered. Maybe it was something clever and succinct like, "because I can." I'm pretty sure that wasn't it, although it sounds a lot better now.

Maybe you've heard about the survey saying one-third of American students think the first Amendment goes too far and only half -- yes, half -- of students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely.

That isn't depressing. That's just downright scary. The government could start regulating news content tomorrow and half the student body wouldn't care.

Kansas City Star columnist Mike Hendricks blames it on right-wing talk radio: "Guys like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Whining Bill O'Reilly have built careers denigrating the press. We're all a bunch of libs, they say, out to push an agenda that's hurtful to the well-being of mom, apple pie and the Republic." He also blames it on declining social studies education and several well-known media scandals.

If I learned one thing in my patriotic pilgrimage to Williamsburg, Virginia last year, it was this: take your rights and freedoms seriously because nobody else will. Kids aren't getting that message in school. Adults aren't doing much better at home. We're so scared of terrorism we're allowing the government to sand away our freedoms with overreaching legislation like the Patriot Act and the indefinite detention of enemy combatants, who are obviously whoever the government decides them to be. Some example we're setting.

Part of reason kids don't get history and social studies -- which would give them some appreciation for Constitutional freedom -- is because too many schools do it by the book. Just read it. In math courses, you work out problems. In science, you do experiments. In English, you're working to write coherent sentences, wrestling with words and revising paragraphs. But no interactivity takes place when it comes to teaching the past and the bedrocks of our society. Read a bunch of facts, memorize a bunch of dates, study a bunch of dead white guys... and then forget it all.

We need to make civics class more like science class. Let's make it a lab for democracy. I'm reminded of the amazing ABC News documentary "Eye Of The Storm," where elementary school teacher Jane Elliott taught her class about racism by dividing them by eye color. Maybe we teach our kids about the Bill Of Rights by taking rights away from them and seeing how they like it... starting with the First Amendment. Remember that old cliche -- you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Let's make our kids want what they have.

But what about the adults? Maybe us media types need to take a radical step to educate the masses. Maybe we let somebody in the Bush Administration decide the lead story of the New York Times or the evening news broadcasts for one night to show the danger of government-controlled media. Or maybe we don't -- because the hard right wouldn't get the point.

I consider myself a patriotic independent. I vote for who I want, Republican or Democratic. And despite journalists' low ranking on the list of most admired professions, I've never been spat upon for telling people I produce television newscasts. Most people ask me if I know Anchor X. One person overinterpreted the "producer" title, asking if I had to put up my own money to get the show on the air. Heavens, no. Aside from transmission, payroll and equipment costs, free speech is still free.

All I ever wanted to do in this business was produce quality television -- not change the world, not get somebody elected. All I ever wanted to do was make my audience informed and smarter. All I ever wanted to do was leave the world better than I found it. Relax, this isn't a suicide note.

I'm fortunate to work at a station in Tucson which gets the "quality" part. So did the station I came from in Texas, when people used to drive by and shout "Five is number one!" whenever our anchors were out doing some community service project. Granted, we're not here to be liked, but if we want to be respected, all of us gotta be schooled.