I made a terrible mistake tonight. I turned on a TV news network – or what passes for one in today’s melange of mainstream mediocrity – and listened.

What I heard was appallingly mindless and shockingly superficial – and I realized that my country’s story is being told, as it unfolds on a minute-to-minute basis, by people unworthy of doing the telling.

Unworthy.

This nation’s history is being recounted, on a daily basis, by those once perceived as watchdogs who have become attack dogs, by those once meant to be on-the-scene purveyors of fact who have become perpetrators of actions that create events rather than report them as they happen, by those who seek to shape history by opining on it instead of presenting it as it is – warts and all.

There is something obscene about turning each chapter of our country’s rich and varied tale into a soundbyte meant to entertain rather than inform; there is something viscerally wrong with being reliant on ratings rather than reality.

But more to the point, there is something downright un-American about recounting our collective stories in terms of interpretation and politically-driven perspective in place of delivering the truth – unvarnished and unadorned – as captured by the unforgiving lens of facts-on-the-ground, as seen by those who live it as opposed to those who seek to package it like so much useless fluff, in ways considered consumer-friendly and appropriately dumbed-down in order to appeal to the lowest common intellectual denominator.

Unworthy. A simple word, fraught with meaning. Those who currently claim the title “journalist” are so apparently devoid of ethics, morals, and a sense of the call of their once-lofty profession, so as to render a previously esteemed title as nothing more than an epithet hurled at liars, propagandists, sell-outs – people willing to tear the tapestry woven of our nation’s many threads into disposable rags to be sold between commercials.

Our story will be told, our history will survive. We, the People – in the course of our daily lives – will tell our children what we saw, what we heard, what we remember. We will tell them the facts we ferreted out; we will remind them that the truth is out there, betwixt and between the “official story” they’ll see on YouTube decades from now.

We will tell them the stories – of 9-11, of Katrina, of WMDs that never existed, of “liberation” that never came. We will recount these events through the eyes of NYC firefighters, through the mouths of returned vets, through the photographs of NOLA in the aftermath and Abu Gahraib as it happened, through the placards carried by anti-war protestors, through the words of the visionaries who spoke of hope and change.

We will tell the tale, through the anger of the truth-seekers who heard the lies, the mis-information and the mis-representations, and refused to let the official Record of our nation’s participation in world events be diminished or dismissed, apologized-for or excused by way of omission, relegated to the dustbin of history by way of well-groomed, ill-informed, TV new “personalities” willing to say anything to please their corporate sponsors and appease the angst and anger of their viewing audience.

Unworthy. In a word, the media whores who are willing to sell out their country’s ideals and their fellow citizens’ trust are unworthy – unworthy of the task-at-hand they purport to execute, unworthy of the responsibility they pretend to take seriously, unworthy of the burden they feign to bear on our nation’s behalf.

It would be a bright moment in our history were we able to pass the truth of all things on to our children and grandchildren because those in the news media were vigilant in their alleged “chosen profession”, and in the doing turned a non-blinking, non-biased eye on unfolding events – preserving them for all time in meaningful words, in honest reaction, in unedited-for-the-faint-of-heart film.

Unfortunately, it is a sad commentary to note that the truths that make up our history will be passed down, one generation to another, by citizens intent on telling our story not as we wished nor hoped it would be, but as it was – a cause not aided by our present-day “journalists”, but one which will endure in spite of them.

How sad that we have come to this - people who live in a world of instant messaging and as-it-happens world-wide communication, relegated to telling the tale of our glorious/inglorious history to our neighbors over the backyard fence, to our children between Twitters about alleged death panels and celebrity sightings, to ourselves lest we forget who we are, what we believe in, and what we as a nation are determined to remember amidst the idle ramblings of the microphone-endowed.

There is something to be said for the seemingly silent who turn off the TV in disgust, and speak their minds and hearts to everyone - anyone - willing to listen.

And in my own small way, I hope I have said what needs to be said on behalf of those truly worthy of telling our story to the generations that follow ours.