But in the Reagan years we in the press rarely went outside Washington to look at the relationship between policy and legislation and judicial appointments to see how the Reagan Administration's policies were affecting the children, adults and institutions of America. How they were felt in the schools, the workplace, the courts, the black community and the family paycheck. Only now the record is slowly becoming known. Plenty of good journalism is still being done today, to be sure, but it is valued less within our own profession. And it is getting drowned out.
Good journalism requires a degree of courage in today's climate.
It is the most important story in America, straining the fabric of our national existence, touching on all our problems. Meanwhile, next to race, the media itself remains the great uncovered story in America. Only the Wash ington Post, the Los Angeles Times and occasionally the New York Times and Wall Street Journal ever attempt to deal meaningfully with the subject, and even then, not very aggressively. Where does the McLaughlin Group fit in the pantheon of idiot culture, one might ask. Let me suggest that the ideas of most of the Washington talking heads are just as tired as those of the politicians and that perhaps the talking heads and the politicians have come to resemble and reflect each other to the point of caricature, a caricature recognized only outside the Beltway.