A kind of screaming in the night

Much depends on what happens in Iraq.

For if the country splits more deeply over that, journalism will continue to be tugged, politicized, degraded.

Who will be believed? Who will "man" the gate? Who will be trusted? Perhaps with the death of credible anchors, believable authority, standards of journalistic quality control, the answer will simply be:

"Every man and woman for himself."

Flashes, soundbytes, politicization, talk shows, embeds, disinformation, screaming, blogging, arguing.

Has believability gone south?

The Iraq war brings back some of the deep divisions of the Vietnam period, in an age of different technology.

Technology which both informs, splinters, technology which facilitates both the partisan gatekeeper and the non -- mediated explosion of polemics and propaganda. Technology which expands access, reduces the filter of quality control and grants each emotional partisan a full range of enormously detailed biased information.

A kind of "screaming in the night."

Plus foreign reporting is now so tightly wired to the home office that it is dominated even more by political controversy in America. There is a tendency for overseas reporting to be but an extension of the new Civil War between competing American cultures.

Correspondents in the field are at the instant beck and call of stateside editors proding them for reportage dovetailed to feed current American obsessions. The ability of correspondents to independently rove and provide correctives to an American centered view of the world declines.

The more information, the less wisdom. Oodles of loud data feed fear and paranoia. Screened out are vital context, the cultural and historical perspectives which might help guide more confidently a nation obsessed with worst case scenarios of threats to its safety.

Papers like the one I worked for, The Christian Science Monitor, survive, but if the polarization builds, professional journalists will continue to lose stature.......

Again, much depends on what happens in Iraq.

If the war can be finessed, "muddled through," these problems may be less extreme. But if it continues to grow in cost, deaths and prolonged frustration?

American nationalism is strong, strengthened both by 9/11 and Iraq -- but also strengthened by the appearance that Reagan policies defeated the Soviet Union.

What happens if the soaring nationalism of invincibility meets the interminable frustration of defeat?

Does it turn outward against a threatening world?

Or does it turn inwardly cannibalistic -- to devour in disgrace the Administration which led American armies into Iraq? Or to devour the critics who question militant American military nationalism?

The pain of continuing war, coupled with the growth of partriotic nationalism could well further undermine traditional journalism, one possible victim in a new American cultural Civil War.

But this is the worst case scenario. Hells Bells, never underestimate the possibility that this country may somehow muddle through.

Remember, though, that if success comes, it will be at a cost.

There are no free lunches when one seeks security by enlarging one's footprint on a reshaped world.

Let us not be totally surprised if many more Americans die --- and if our standard and quality and security of living drop. If not now -- later in years to come.

Oh, did I mention? Others besides Americans die.