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When I was younger we used to play a game called “If I was king”. The rules were easy, there weren’t any; there was no structure, no winner, no loser. We would just fantasize about what we would do if we were in a position to call the shots. It goes like this, “If I was king I’d make dutch apple pie the national dessert” or “If I was king I make Donald Trump fire himself”. The game provided a chance to talk about change and it was completely random. Kind of like calling shot gun, sometimes you’d do it and other times you would not.

I was watching This Week with George Stephanopoulos and all I could think was “good God, when are we going to see some fresh faces on these talk shows?” This week’s panel discussion included Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, Donna Brazile and George Will.

Yes, they have all paid their dues, they all have a lot of insight and they are definite insiders. But that is the problem. I can’t help but watch these people bloviate about this candidates mojo or that candidates anger and think that we are in the position that we are in because of the mainstream media. These people have either been telling us what we should think or as in the case of Stephanopoulos and Brazile, working for politicians that have messed up this country in so many ways that I really can’t stand much to hear any of them talk any more.

I give them little weight because they are not speaking about change per se themselves. They are every bit as much the status quo as the politicians they are trying to dress up. The only reason I watch these shows anymore is because they have access. Which is, btw, the reason I should probably turn them off. Access is a double edged sword because people become accustomed to going to those who have access which is in itself a limiting process for those that have much to say but aren’t afforded a platform.

In some aspects the Internet is helping level the playing field. There is an independence that is not dictated or controlled by corporate media conglomerates; and this makes people that work in the media a bit unnerved. Media dinosaurs such as Helen Thomas who frequently forgets to check her thoughts before opening her mouth.

“What I really worry about is that I think the bloggers and everyone, everyone with a laptop thinks they’re journalists,” Thomas said. “And, they certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics, and so forth. There’s a deterioration,” she continued. “Reporters laid down on the job in the run up to this [the Iraq] war.”

What standards is Thomas talking about? The professional urge to denigrate people with opinions because they didn’t go to journalism school or hang out with the ivy league crowd typical of many “top” journalists? Is that the standard or the deterioration? Hers is a view shared ny many “professional” journalists. Yet from Rathergate and Plamegate to fake AP photojournalists and fake stories from the front in Iraq the mainstream media has done irreparable damage to its own credibility as well as that of the country in general. If that represents journalistic standards, ethics and “so forth” then I’ll take the bloggers.

The perception among many bloggers is that “reporters” and “journalists” haven’t been doing a very good job lately. Many feel that the paid opinion makers and beat reporters are products of three camps, those who tell people what they want to hear, those who tell people what focus groups tell them what their audience wants to hear and those who tell people what their buddies in politics want people to hear. In each case we get manufactured opinions, shoddy reporting and artificial insights. Professional in that it follows a corporate standard among a group of people that all pat themselves on the back but nothing more than a dressed up psa.

Thankfully the tide is turning. Change is happening whether or not Helen Thomas or anyone else wants it to happen. If I was king….

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