Brummett laments the loss of media context, ills of ‘cheap speech’

story submitted by the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith

Syndicated columnist John Brummett lamented the loss of "institutional memory" among news media outlets today as reporters are urged to "get whatever you can, however you can get it and get it quick."

Brummett’s comments came during a Constitution Week event held Sept. 17 on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, an event where he spoke to just-out-of-high-school students who sat next to senior citizens from the community. Brummett’s appearance at UAFS was part of a week of activities with the theme "Freedom of the Press and You." This is the third year for UA Fort Smith to participate in the American Democracy Project, an initiative of more than 200 universities in the United States that is designed to foster civic engagement at all levels.

Brummett said no one had been working at some of those media entities long enough to stop and look at the broader concept.

"It’s not that they are purposely refusing to provide context [in what they report] … not that they are bad people," he said. "The system has evolved into a way that does not serve serious contextual reporting."

He said this type of reporting, found on 24-hour cable operations and on the Internet now, has become the norm.

Brummett, who has been writing for Arkansas newspapers for nearly 40 years, said he also deplored news organizations that exist to advance an ideological purpose and tailored their news coverage to that end.

His topic for the UAFS talk was "The Burden of Freedom," part of an American Democracy Project activity on the campus. Brummett called freedom of the press a struggle.

"The burden … is to overcome the destructive nature of cheap speech," he said, calling what is seen on the Internet often incendiary, full of rumor and personal attack and hosted by people that are anonymous.

"Free speech is great, but it is a burden, and it is a burden to be overcome."

Brummett said the burdens of freedom are to get past fear to have the courage to exercise the freedom granted, to put up with "all the nonsense we hear," and to, amid the free expression treasured, to overcome it with reason and detachment.

"I’m not giving you a lot of answers. I’m giving you things to think about."

At the end of his talk, audience members questioned him on a variety of issues regarding his speech and including national health care and the upcoming proposed merger of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with the Morning News of Springdale.

Brummett started his career as a part-time sportswriter for the former Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock when he was only 16. His columns on Arkansas politics, which began appearing in February 1986, have been published in the Arkansas Gazette, Arkansas Democrat, Arkansas Times, Arkansas Business and in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Since July 2000 he has been a syndicated columnist for a group of Stephens Media newspapers, which includes the Times Record of Fort Smith.

Brummett is the author of a book on Bill Clinton’s first year as president, "Highwire — From the Back Roads to the Beltway, the Education of Bill Clinton," which he wrote while spending 1993 living in Washington, D.C. The book was praised by the Chicago Sun-Times as one of the best political books of 1994 and lauded by the Library Journal as "the best book to date on the Clinton presidency, better than Bob Woodward’s, "The Agenda."