Sometimes I greatly admire The Charlie Rose on PBS and sometimes I feel like I ought to give my blood pressure a rest and just give him a pass that night. Strangely enough, it was his topic and his guest, top Hollywood Actor, Harrison Ford, and his recent appearance in the movie, "42" that left me with an irresistible urge to return to a prior topic of this column, the "truth", and the obligation (or not) to tell it to the public as part of their civic duties, or as the Canadian Radio and Television Commission puts it in their licensing language, their "community responsibilities," that justify the cheap (or free) licensing to them the use of the "public" airwaves through which they broadcast their "for profit" signals, with little or no direct compensation to the "public" or the public through fees paid to the government. I mean, if "we," the public, are going to loan broadcasters the use of electromagnetic spectrum, with which to inundate us with commercial messages from their sponsors who pay them very handsomely to do so, don't they have some fundamental obligation to "serve" the public good? Isn't it part of their responsibility to tell the "truth" as best they can ascertain just what the facts, and therefore something we can reasonably call the objective "truth" of matters? I am not saying that there is no room for opinion. I've got a million of them and I frankly I hope that before the course of my life is over, I hope I will have conveyed all, or nearly all of them to the public at large. And that is not even to mention the fact that my opinion changes, frequently, as it should, if and when my understanding of the "facts" of the case should change. But I still resent it when a celebrity crosses that line from telling the "truth" about a "real life" character he has been portraying on screen, and the facts surrounding his life and his motivations. You see, as far as I know, Harrison Ford out-and-out lied about the motivations of his Jackie Robinson story character, the legendary owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a gentleman named, Branch Rickey (I included his Wikipedia entry here just for some perspective, not necessarily because it paints an accurate picture). You see, in the script for the movie, the Branch Rickey character says: "A black man in white baseball." After which much hoopla is made of the benefits to the black man's social standing in America, but the team scout makes the very telling observation, that: "If we succeed, Brooklyn will win a pennant." That, folks is what the underlying truth is for Mr. Rickey. A "pennant" in baseball, even in those early days, was worth a lot of money. More money at every game in terms of the total box office, more people come out to see the winners from last year, not to mention the additional box office receipts of extra games after the end of the regularly scheduled season games, games with large box office themselves because of the prestige of winning heightens spectator interest as well. But Mr. Rickey was a deeper thinker, and a better business man than that. For all his reported religious feelings, and even a line of biblical origin by Mr. Robinson's character about, "having another cheek," in reference to being able to remain above the fray should it come to that (and it certainly did, not to mention that Mr. Robinson's reputation for using those cheeks in support of plenty of profanity along the way as well). But Mr. Rickey saw a whole league of baseball players, some of whom were actually pretty good, most of whom were only below average, but they were attracting fans. They were collecting box office, and Mr. Rickey didn't own any significant part of that whole league, as compared to his league leading Brooklyn team in "white baseball". He saw past the color of their skin to the color of their money, and he was determined to have as much of it as he possibly could get his hands on. That's the real, central reason for his taking such a huge business risk by bringing along a black player, through the farm team system (through the Montreal team, you might notice, where resistance would be minimal, Canadians being a good deal more color blind than Southern folks, whether or not it is a matter of the snow). Mr. Rickey didn't care about the color of the faces of the players, he cared about the color of the butts that were not covering enough of the seats in his stadium, and the rest, as they say, is now both film and history. You may not agree with me on that point, though I think you can see the business logic in making a minor adjustment in his staffing as an experiment with very little downside potential and a huge upside possibility, especially as the population of the Northern states turned darker and darker. It was a bold move, perhaps, but one that made economic sense. On the topic of economic sense the broadcasting industry has also made a calculated gamble, and it has paid off well for them too. No, I don't mean the "Jeffersons" spinoff from the Archie Bunker Show, or even Sanford and Sons (I wrote a script for them one time, thinking that Redd Fox could easily top an almost all solo performance by white man, one Dick van Dyke, though they never bought it, the show was cancelled just when I found an agent to represent the script, who, not entirely incidentally found no problem with the fact that it was written by a white man -- odd, isn't it, how Hollywood sensitivities have changed or do change from time to time -- it is certainly fairly odd that Tonto is to be played by a funny little white guy more recently known as "Captain Jack Sparrow"), but returning from my digressions, the media move that has held up fairly well, is the adaptation of programming to the "Sesame Street" generations' (yes, plural) short attention span. What started out as a "good thing" from an educational point of view, which is to aim low at the short attention span of a pre-school audience member has come back to haunt us all with "snippets" of everything. We now live in a "sound byte world", and worse yet, most of those same sound bytes are coming from barely literate (and I am being kind, because the majority couldn't pass a formal literacy test above the third grade level) public. Yes, the "public" is taking over the news cycle. The "how do you feel" question is now almost obligatory for one-the-scene reporters for every television station, and the first camera on the scene is always considered the "winner" in the daily news sweepstakes. It gets worse. I will be happy to tell you how and why. You see we have gone from the Sesame-verse to the Twitter verse, and "twit" is the operative portion of the term. Were I less etymologically educated, I would hazard a guess that "twitter" had its origins in the concept that a "twit" was "twice" the "idiot" and thus a "twit" her/himself. Very little pithy, or of any value whatsoever comes from the 140 character condensate that makes up so much of the "conversation" on the internet universe. That is not to say that human beings are incapable of incredible wit and brevity at the same time. Evidence of that is presented daily on The Daily Show with John Stewart (and it pains me to admit that I was shocked that the show has been around for 18 seasons, so far). Clever turns of phrases show up, well, daily, on The Daily Show. So much so that I am at a loss to think of any at the moment which would be adequate to express my admiration for the quick wit they obviously capably display. My main point, conversely, is that even relatively erudite, clever, even intellectual people are so often disappointingly falling flat in their attempts to capture attention when they proffer contributions via twitter tweets to their favorite political pundits while still on the air (or, one suspects, at least occasionally, with some miraculous form of pre-cognition of topics and phrases about to come from the mouths of the guests, not just the folks on whom they are commentating). I am afraid that, while I have not entirely lost faith with my newest friend from the Cronkite School of Broadcasting (that's Chad, since Marianne has not yet returned my communications), I do live with some fears that the "twitterverse" holds a lot less promise for the future of journalism than I hope. After all, while one can spend some of the time speaking with the intelligentsia, it ultimately comes down to making your smoke signals intelligible to the "masses" of mass media, and I don't think we currently have sufficient numbers of capable translators to make that happen. I sincerely hope Chad and I, and I hope with some help from Marianne and her friends and colleagues both at the Cronkite school and at what I hope will soon be my "alma mater" the New College of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Arizona State University, that we will be able to stem that tide, and reverse those currents. Thank you for your time and your attention, Sincerely, (and note the changes in addresses below since I crashed Outlook for what I expect to be the LAST time [with apologies in advance to anyone whom I may inadvertently be neglecting for the near future]) Stafford "Doc" Williamson daochienergy@gmail.com or stafford.doc.williamson@gmail.com p.s. I've also been a busy fellow with some political activities on the issue of discriminatory laws with respect to the rights of persons of a certain age (the age known as "minority")(you could even call it "minority rights" if you were writing for the Daily Show) as well as trying to set up a Portrait Studio for formal portraits printed (exclusively) on Canvas, so please pardon the mess, the construction is on-going. p.p.s. If I had been a tiny bit more etymologically educated, I might not have left out the first "Y" the first time I tried to spell it. p.p.p.s. This blog was supposed to be posted to my old column (since 2006)in the American Chronicle (which also includes the Santa Barbara Chronicle, and various other websites) but due to crashing Outlook, and trying to change email addresses/identities in American Chronicle it will no longer let me in. Fortunately, I am well known here at Google (not personally, although I was a sysop on Compuserve when Serge was still in school). so anyway, this was supposed to include a news clip picture of "Sarah [Palin] doesn't speak for me" to which I quipped, "Sarah shouldn't be allowed to speak for anyone without a teleprompter." (Just in case you are auditioning for Daily Show quippers.)