Daniel Schorr, I'll miss you....

Daniel Schorr passed away yesterday and already I miss him.  He was the feisty, principled journalist who was number 17 on Richard Nixon's famous enemies list.  In fact, he was the reporter who revealed that such a list actually existed, and I imagine his surprise and pride at discovering his name on it.

He literally worked his way up through the ranks of broadcast journalism from the ground floor, starting by sending in tips to a local newspaper at the age of 15.  Then he worked his way down through the same industry to end his career broadcasting on NPR.  His concerns were my concerns -- as a citizen and a student of American politics.

His sonorous voice on TV or radio tended to sound professorial as he grew older, but he earned my respect as a viewer and a listener year after year.  As I learned to listen to him over so many years (and one had to really learn to listen) he became, for me, a kind of extension of the voice of Edward R. Murrow -- the extension of the idea that a primary role of journalism is to speak truth to power.

I was listening in my car to his last broadcast on NPR, just a few weeks ago, wondering how much longer I would hear his voice. I found myself stopped at the intersection, saying to myself "Thank God NPR is keeping his voice alive  after he was driven off of broadcast TV." His commentary was as strong on the last broadcast as it had always been. Only Bill Moyers today garners a similar respect from me, and right now Moyers too has gone off the airwaves. 

Schorr's contribution to journalism is difficult to understand in the current climate of corporate broadcasting and the daily Internet news cycle.  He was not particularly photogenic. His voice had a slightly unnerving quality about it.  He was not funny -- rather a bit erudite.  But his commentary provided context, knowledge, and insight -- and not a small amount of wisdom -- as he laid out his perspective on current events.  He seemed to muse about what was happening, sometimes awestruck that his craft had sunk to such depths of frivolous nattering. When so much was at stake for humanity, how can shows like Entertainment News and the Daily Show represent the heart of reporting today?

He reminded us that there is a kind of insanity in the reporting of current events today that too often propels personality demagoguery in journalism.  He was not of that school: Indeed, he seemed to go against that grain.  His reporting and commentary demonstrated that journalism should be more about substance than style; that news anchors and reporters should actually think about what is being said before they open their mouths or read a prepared script.  His instincts were often right: We're living in an age of propaganda now, and not an age of information delivered through news broadcasts. But sometimes he was wrong, and we took him for a honest person, fooled like the rest of us, by the twists and turns of history.

If there were truly an enemy of the Conservative Right, Schorr seemed willing and capable of taking on the role, without bowing to mud-slinging.  When something was wrong -- as is so often the case -- Schorr looked for the historical angle to describe it, and then constructed an argument, often nuanced and detailed, to cut it down to its bone.  But the Progressives couldn't take him for granted either. If he disagreed, they were warned that trouble was in the offing. His commentaries on the Obama Administration were filled with such warnings.  His continual critiques of the Clinton Administration were also usually on the mark.

But most of all, it was a sense that he couldn't be bought or co-opted.  I think that's why radio and NPR became his final formats for expressing himself: Corporate sponsors could no longer reach him; Politicians could not intimidate him.  They couldn't influence his words.  Instead, they chose to try to marginalize what he was saying, believing no one really cared any more.


I cared.


I will miss Daniel Schorr.  His voice was the voice that glued a past excellence in journalism to its present sad state, and I -- as a writer working in a completely different realm -- admired him.  I admired his detailed reporting, his thoughtful commentary, and his feisty sense of right and wrong.

More importantly to me, I admired his courage to speak truth to power.