Turbulent week in media reminder of public clamor for quality

It was a remarkably turbulent week in the world of media, one that began with NBC anchor Brian Williams engulfed in scandal and ended with the stunning deaths of two highly regarded journalists.

In the middle of it all, Jon Stewart, the hypocrisy-puncturing host of The Daily Show, announced he was stepping down by the end of the year.

The day before his death, in his singular and incisive way, David Carr had sought to connect the dots between Williams' suspension and Stewart's decision to move on.

And in the wake of his unexpected death Thursday evening, Carr, the widely admired New York Times media columnist, has become an active part of the conversation over the state of media in the U.S.

Carr called Stewart "a patriot" for the comedian's extensive — and often devastating — media criticism, wrapped in humor and neatly packaged for social media share.

"For all the cynicism assigned to his approach, Mr. Stewart is at heart a patriot and an idealist," Carr wrote in his last The Media Equation column for the Times. "Again and again, his indictment of politicians and media figures was less about what they were and more about what they failed to be."

Carr may well have been speaking about himself. With the sudden passing of Carr and CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, Williams' suspension and Stewart's departure announcement, the Twittersphere was quick to label the past few days the saddest week in journalism. But in their own quirky and vibrant ways, conversations about the men's fate were hopeful reminders of the public's potent desire for more of the best in journalism.

"The upshot of all this turbulence and turmoil has been, surprisingly perhaps, a kind of clarity, a reaffirmation of core values — of independence, honesty, commitment and public service," said Ed Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. "The heroes are extolled for the right reasons, the sinner is condemned for a failure to uphold them adequately. There's something comforting and reassuring in all the turbulence in the news business, and to see in these multiple shocks that people fall back and draw from the reservoir of shared values."

Social media is rife with word lovers. #AdviceForYoungJournalists was a trending topic for much of the week. It's easy to dismiss the conversation about the week's events as merely the soul searching of self-referential journalists. But the week's story arc — from the outcry over Williams' fibbing spilling over from a week earlier to the mourning of men who represented substance over style — seemed to resonate loudly beyond the small media circle. Williams, Stewart, Simon and Carr were all top trending topics on Twitter.

"Many beyond the New York Times (readership) felt familiarity," said media analyst Ken Doctor. "They felt the vacuum. In this time of great media turmoil, we lost a lot of authority in the press — (the ones) who just tell the story right."

Our innate need to share emerges swiftly during times of tragedy and the feeding frenzy alike. And Doctor noted the swift turn in the reactions of the Twitter mob, pointing out "that social media can go from this incredibly mean-spiritedness and easy-to-pile-on in the case of Williams ... to incredible warmth and life affirming in the case of Carr."

The sustained spotlight on the media also had much to do with the interconnectedness of large, branded characters. Williams apparently exaggerated his experiences covering the war in Iraq to establish an intrepid persona — a trait that fans of Simon took for granted in the 60 Minutes correspondent. During a nearly half-century-long career at CBS, Simon had covered conflicts from Vietnam to Yugoslavia to the Persian Gulf, where he was jailed for 40 days. Stewart shared Carr's penchant for deconstructing and laughing at manufactured news and hypocrisy. It was Carr, an expert on redemption from personal demons — he had been a crack cocaine user — who prominently declared that Williams should not be fired.

"People are still really interested in media in spite of the fragmentation and dispersal of clicks and eyeballs," said Stephen Reese, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "In a world of all these multiple platforms, you still have interest in journalists who have become brands unto themselves."

Beyond the public mourning of the men who died, the wistful tone tinging the reactions to the week's events may reflect the ambiguities of the industry, said Charles Davis, dean of the journalism school at the University of Georgia.

"It reminds us that we are part of a large fragile ecosystem that's being threatened on all fronts — digital, corporate and forces of mass communications," he said. "Journalism is the core of a broader field of mass communication. We're all under the threat of being subsumed by entertainment."