Earlier this month, I attended a lecture by television news icon Dan Rather, held at Hattiesburg's historic Saenger Theater.
The lecture was sponsored by The University of Southern Mississippi's Dale Center for the Study of War & Society.
Southern Miss is my Alma mater. I graduated in 1977, with a degree in Radio-TV-Film and a minor in Journalism.
TV news and journalism have always been passions of mine.
I was the kid who couldn't visit a town without grabbing a copy of its daily newspaper.
Local news shows – especially in the larger TV markets – have always been must-see-TV for me when visiting the big city.
Growing up in the 1960s, Hattiesburg was basically a one-television-station town with WDAM-TV Channel 7, still our NBC affiliate.
It was a long time before cable TV made it to my east Hattiesburg neighborhood.
In those days, without a good rotary TV antenna outside the house, you got only WDAM and WLOX-TV, or channel 13 (ABC) on the Gulf Coast.
I grew up watching NBC's daily network newscast on WDAM.
My mother never missed the evening news. I was always there in the den, watching with her, even though I was too young to appreciate the importance of some of the news stories.
In hindsight, I was watching history happen, right before my eyes.
While we were tuned in to the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC at 5:30 PM (CST), over at CBS, Walter Cronkite ruled the air and the network TV news ratings.
Dan Rather was, then, a correspondent for the CBS Evening News.
He became a household name with his reports, covering the front lines of Vietnam as the network's primary war correspondent.
Tuned in to NBC, I didn't get to watch his reports.
The Vietnam War became known as the "Living Room War."
The advent of television meant virtually every American home had a TV. So we got to witness the war, almost in real time, from the security of our living rooms.
As a child, watching the news, I couldn't phantom the horrors of war the way grownups did.
Mr. Rather's lecture was like being in a time machine as he made real the horrors of the Vietnam War, fought nearly fifty years ago.
One story he shared stands out most for me. That is, his being allowed a brief 15-minute tour of one of the Navy's hospital ships.
For starters, I'd never even thought about hospital ships.
Mr. Rather's lecture tweaked my desire to know more and I did a little research on the Internet.
Some of us may take for granted how necessary hospital ships would be. During the Vietnam conflict, as we all know, American casualties numbered into the tens of thousands.
Those soldiers injured while fighting in the villages and rice fields of Vietnam had to be cared for and, hopefully, their lives saved.
Mr. Rather was escorted into the belly of one of those hospital ships.
What he described was heart wrenching and, indeed, difficult to imagine.
Bed after bed on the ship, each occupied by severely injured Americans.
Doctors and nurses fought tirelessly, in a battle of their own, to save the lives of our soldiers. Many of those injured had fallen victim to machine gun fire, grenade explosions, or God only knows in what other ways.
Now away from the battlefield, our soldiers lay suffering in the belly of that ship.
Amputations were common, and for some of the soldiers, multiple amputations were necessary.
All that was gruesome and hard enough to picture in my mind's eye. But here's something that shouldn't surprise you.
Mr. Rather observed one common link among those men suffering from, in too many cases, mortal injuries.
The misery in the room was often punctuated with cries of pain from our soldiers, each enduring the unthinkable.
But along with those cries, the singular word a young Dan Rather recalled hearing most often was an understandable one.
"Mother."
A tear came to my eye as he shared that part of the story.
How many of us would have been crying the same?
In a situation like that, my mother would be the first person I'd think of and want to see.
Every man, no matter how big and strong, will always be a little boy to his mother.
Oh, the safety and security our mothers provided; no wonder these brave men were calling for them.
During the question and answer session following the lecture, one audience member posed a very thoughtful query.
He wanted to know if, while covering the war, there were times Mr. Rather feared for his own life.
His response was insightful.
Yes, he confessed, there were times his life may have been in danger, but with an important difference.
As a TV news reporter, and not a combatant, Mr. Rather had the option of taking cover, doing his best to at least get himself out of harm's way.
That was often not an option for our soldiers.
They were there to fight and had no choice but to find themselves, every day, risking their lives, protecting the freedoms we enjoy and sometimes take for granted.
Still, I have to give Mr. Rather credit, and indeed, to all journalists, print or broadcast, for the jobs they do.
As American citizens, we not only have the right but the need to know what happens in the theater of war.
Unless we have a loved one involved in the conflict, it becomes too easy (from the comfort of our living rooms) to take our soldiers’ sacrifices for granted.
The media brings those stories home to us, giving us no choice but to acknowledge that war is, indeed, hell.
Journalists bring the ugliness of war home to us, often at great risk to their own safety.
They may not carry guns, or fire on enemies but they, themselves, may be fired upon.
TV news reporters serve an extremely important function: keeping us and our government informed of what's happening on the battlefields of war.
A politician's greatest responsibility is that of making decisions about sending America's soldiers into harm’s way, fighting wars on foreign soil.
Ironically, many of those same politicians did all they could to stay out of the military, especially service in Vietnam.
Many of us are old enough to remember the Vietnam War was one of the most controversial in American history, and also one of the longest.
It was fought not only in the jungles of Vietnam, but right here on the streets of America.
I remember watching war protests on the evening news, and again, I was too young to appreciate their meaning.
Because of the war, the 1960s and early 70s were some of the most politically divided times in our nation's history. (Sound familiar?)
Similar controversy has grown over the ongoing battle in Afghanistan which is now on record, officially, as the longest fought war in American history.
No, war is not pretty.
That's why the work of our reporters and, yes, the media are so important.
One of the freedoms our soldiers fight for is our right to free speech.
Every bit as important is our country's having a free press, something else we take for granted.
Freedom of the press is a luxury, as well as a necessity. In other parts of the world, a truly free press does not exist.
I wouldn't want to live in such a country, as is the case with our biggest world rivals, Russia and China.
Love them or hate them, we need members of the media.
Their work is the surest way to keep our elected officials accountable during times of war and peace.
I get very upset, as is so popular these days, when they are referred to as the "fake media" or "fake news."
I never heard that expression when I was growing up, watching NBC Nightly News with John Chancellor. (To me, Mr. Chancellor was the dean of network news for my generation.)
Dan Rather's journalistic career is not without its own controversy.
And sometimes, a print or broadcast news outlet may make a mistake.
News operations are run by human beings, and just like with you and me, they can make mistakes.
As long as the news organization earnestly acknowledges and corrects the error, I am fine with that.
ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC, CNN, and I haven't even gotten to the Internet or print media.
As Americans, we are very fortunate to have so many sources for news and information.
And yes, some of those sources are dubious, or worse.
I do believe hacking by Russia, and other players, is involved in some of the false information masquerading as news we see online.
Still, as a student of the media, I do not adhere to the notion that we're being force-fed "fake news," especially by the major news networks and publications I grew up with.
And I certainly don't need to be instructed by some politician as to whether what I see or read in the news is true.
Yes, some news outlets are biased in their reporting, with that bias sometimes taken to extremes.
But I'm informed enough to recognize the difference between news and propaganda.
What I do not require is interpretation, of any kind, from mostly self-serving politicians, trying to tell me how to think. Now that's an attempt at creating propaganda.
I'll use my own intellect to make up my mind as to whether what I'm watching is "real" news or "fake."
Thank you for visiting us and sharing your experiences with Hattiesburg, Mr. Rath-er.
Elijah Jones is a writer and a proud graduate of the Hattiesburg Public School System and the University of Southern Mississippi. Send him an email (or seven or eight) at: edjhubtown@aol.com.
