Mike Allen at Politico offered a snippet of Washington Post Nixon-trashing legend Bob Woodward’s commencement address at the Superdome for Loyola University in New Orleans. In addressing the intersection of money and politics, Woodward said “there is some truth” to the notion that the media has recently “lost its investigative zeal.”
If you follow the news at all, you know. It is said that the media is sleeping, lost its investigative zeal and does not have the patience to dig. There is some truth to that. But that changes when there is a good story. And money in politics is a great story and important to democracy. It is important that the next president be able, unfettered and unbought, to find and move the country to the next stage of good.
You should insist that the sleeping giant, which is both the country and the media, wake up. The result could be, if you are persistent, that we have a kind of ‘Unrestricted Investigative Warfare’ as the news organizations, the giants, the little people, left, right and center compete to follow the money and explain its corruptions and ramifications.
It’s not known whether Woodward addressed the television networks being more interested in reporting on celebrities, British royals, and the weather – or whether the philanthropic funding of journalism doesn’t raise a different layer of money-and-politics issue (take, for example, George Soros funding National Public Radio).
Perhaps that kind of "investigative warfare" on the media's funding would not be condoned.
