FAREWELL DANIEL SCHORR

From NPR:

No other journalist in memory saw as much history as Daniel Schorr.

He was born the year before the Russian Revolution and lived to see the Digital Revolution. He was there before the Berlin Wall went up and there a generation later when it came down. He was born before people had radio in their homes but pioneered the use of radio, television, satellites and then the Web to report the news.

How many people were personal acquaintances of Edward R. Murrow, Nikita Khrushchev, Frank Zappa and Richard Nixon?

For all the history that he reported, Dan Schorr will always be remembered for the moment he stood before live television cameras in 1974 with a breaking bulletin about a list of enemies compiled by the White House.

Schorr began to read the names. One of them was his own. "The note here is, 'A real media enemy,'" he read, before continuing through the list.

"What went through my mind was, 'Don't lose your cool. Be professional,'" he said years later.

More here, with audio.

I didn't start digging Daniel Schorr until I started listening to NPR over a decade ago. Even then, he was older than God. At first, I didn't know how important he was, how many important events he had reported on. I just liked his news analysis, solid stuff, none of the bullshit that had become typical of the corporate media at that point.

It took a moment from The Simpsons to get me thinking about him: Moe had developed an enemies list for some reason, but when Barney started reading it out loud, naming Jane Fonda and Schorr, it became clear that the sleazy bartender had simply copied President Nixon's enemies list. I was like, "Wait a minute. Is this for real? Was Daniel Schorr really on Nixon's enemies list?" After hitting the internet and reading up on him, "Wow" was all I could say.

In addition to being around for most of the important events of the twentieth century, Schorr was very clearly a throwback to a different, and better, era of journalism, back before television decided that news and entertainment were essentially the same thing, back before "balance" meant dutifully recording what "liberals" and "conservatives" said, instead of gauging the accuracy of their statements, instead of contextualizing the words within the grand scheme. I didn't always agree with Schorr, but he always had solid arguments.

If I had one gripe about him, it was that he tended to cut the establishment too much slack. But I'll cut him some slack on this: back in the day, the establishment took its job much more seriously than it does today. That is, Schorr remembered an era when people in government and business truly believed, to an extent, that we were all in this together. Back when being a citizen meant something.

I'm truly going to miss this man's reporting and insight. And so will our nation.

Farewell, Daniel Schorr.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$