The Mainstream Media needs wingmen. I volunteer. 

Katie Couric and news operations at the radio and television networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and other national newspapers, are members of the Mainstream Media, or MSM, as it has come to be called. These are the people responsible for encountering, finding, and objectively reporting the news, and they are the ones that really count, in terms of the safety of the democracy. In fact let’s give them an identifier of their own. They are the Mainstream Mainstream Media, or MMSM. 

Besides the MMSM, all MSM organizations also have an opinion operation housing analysis and commentary, but those opinion operations don’t need wingmen. Some of them should BE wingmen for their MMSM colleagues. 

A wingman is a commentator, no doubt about it. I am about to attack those people who have taken the MMSM under attack, and my mission is to keep them under attack for as long as necessary. I am flying a pretty good airplane. I have 35 years of experience at the controls of the media profession, and I know the news side as well as I know the opinion side. 

The mission needs wingmen because the MMSM can’t defend itself without appearing to lose balance and objectivity, particularly in a political season such as this. I can take on the McCain and Obama camps with impunity, however, because I am a declared commentator flying partisan colors, but they are not politically partisan. I am partisan free press. I am pro-MMSM, and anyone who is not is walking on the fighting side of me. The role of the MMSM in American democracy dates to the 1734 Zenger verdict and predates presidents, politics, and the Constitution. A free press is as basic to American democracy as oxygen atoms are to air. Nothing about this republic is more worthy of our regard and our respect. 

I decided to become an MMSM wingman last night when I heard John McCain say to Katie Couric, “This is not the first time I have seen a governor being questioned by some quote, ‘expert’.” Katie Couric couldn’t bite his head off, but I sure can. I can wonder why a man who would aspire to the presidency of the United States would place his partisan needs before the principle of democratic oxygen. The nation is gripped by fear of financial failure, but no one is asking about the effect on the republic of an MMSM failure, which is far scarier. Rather, it has become open season on the free press. I could hear millions of Americans last night, joining McCain’s attack, cheering his words in the dark. Does he not see the risk? 

In today’s MMSM, speaking of Gov. Sarah Palin’s candidacy, Ron Carey, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, said, “Thanks to the mainstream media, quite a low expectation has been created for her performance.” Katon Dawson, the GOP chair in South Carolina, again referring to Palin, spoke of “a pile-on by the media elite. You don’t have this kind of negative media attack without a question mark being put up.” 

If the MMSM’s reporting – and yes, they are the elites in their business – does not meet the Zenger verdict’s standard of truth, there will be retractions and corrections. In the meantime, the people are free to react to the information with high or low expectations, and with exclamation points or question marks. This wingman mission is all about the people. Taped to my instrument panel are these words: 

“The guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press.” 

Thus an attack such as McCain’s on the MMSM must in fact be an attack on the people. It is time it, and they, were defended.