Salon.com News | "A democracy can die of too many lies": "First, let me assure you that I take in stride attacks by the radical right-wingers who have not given up demonizing me although I retired over six months ago. I should put my detractors on notice: They might just compel me out of the rocking chair and back into the anchor chair.

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle-class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove's slush fund, who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That's who I mean. And if that's editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it's OK to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence."

...

I decided long ago that this wasn't healthy for democracy. I came to see that news is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity. In my documentaries, whether on the Watergate scandal 30 years ago, or the Iran-contra conspiracy 20 years ago, or Bill Clinton's fundraising scandals 19 years ago, or five years ago the chemical industry's long and despicable coverup of its cynical and unspeakable withholding of critical data about its toxic products, I realized that investigative journalism could not be a collaboration between the journalist and the subject. Objectivity was not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference. I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies, as well as the big lie of people in power.

In no way does this permit journalists to make accusations and allegations. It means, instead, making sure that your reporting and your conclusions can be nailed to the post with confirming evidence.

This is always hard to do, but it's never been harder. Without a trace of irony, the powers that be have appropriated the newspeak vernacular of George Orwell's '1984.' They give us a program vowing no child will be left behind while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry."

(Via Salon.)