“We Ask the Tough Questions”
Bob Edwards, host of The Bob Edwards Show on XM Satellite Radio and Bob Edwards Weekend on Public Radio International, reminded the audience at tonight’s annual awards gala that our job as journalists is to ask the tough questions. Investigative reporters in our midst are expected, perhaps mandated, to take months or even years to uncover the truths and report them, he said. While “any idiot can blog,” he half-joked, announcing that he himself is guilty, he’s worried about the state of journalism. With the prevalence of blogs about the mundane and celebrities, “no one’s an editor, but everyone’s a journalist.” Are we giving the public what they need as opposed to what they want?
Edwards also alluded to a memoir he’s writing, and noted that one publisher wanted him to attack National Public Radio for letting him go in 2004. He says he never will because he believes in the mission and audience of public radio. The only negative about the medium is “it lives in mortal fear of being called `liberal,’” he said. But that label should be of no concern to true journalists, he added. “We use our eyes and ears to report what we see and hear, and people’s reactions be damned,” he told the crowd to applause. “That’s our job.”