CBS anchor Scott Pelley: 3 threats to journalism that could doom democracy

I never imagined in my career receiving this honor. Walter Cronkite is alive and well at CBS News, and we live his values and his principles every day.

The Cronkite School is training the young people who will defend our nation and will preserve the hope for freedom in the world. There is no democracy without journalism, and the quality of our democracy is bound tightly to the quality of our journalism. Our audiences deserve unbiased, clear information. Information is the lifeblood of freedom, and that is what is being taught and well learned at the Cronkite School.

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Quality journalism is not a given. We have come to take it for granted. Like all of our other freedoms, it must be fought for. It must be refreshed by every generation. There are threats now to the quality of our information, to the quality of our journalism, that must be reckoned with. Never in human history has more information been available to more people, but it is also true that never before has more bad information been available to more people.

Three of journalism's biggest threats

Since the 1990s, we've been told that the dividing line in media is a line between legacy media and new media. But I believe that we are past that definition. We've entered a post-revolutionary period in media when everything is available all the time. There is a new dividing line to which we must pay urgent attention: It’s the difference between journalism and junk. It’s the difference between quality, well-run newsrooms, and what I consider to be three threats to our traditions of journalism.

First, there are the aggregators — those sites and channels that just report other people's reporting without bothering to verify whether those stories are true or whether the facts are straight.

Second, there are the purveyors of bias that lull viewers into a partisan coma on the left and the right.

And finally, and most insidious of all, we have the advent of the charlatans who publish and broadcast outright lies with no regard for the values of journalism. Is terrorism the greatest threat to our country? A recession? I suggest the quickest, most direct way to ruin a democracy is to poison the information.

At the turn of the century, distribution was revolutionized, and more channels of information became available. But the principles of journalism never change, even in the midst of that media revolution. It doesn't matter whether you're writing on a glass tablet or a stone tablet, the values of reporting and journalism are immutable. We must ask ourselves: is it right, is it fair, is it honest?

We should open minds, not close them

Another trend that worries me is biased reporting both on the left and the right. This is growing in popularity because what these people traffic in is “confirming information.” They tell you that what you already believe is right. We are becoming a nation of information tribes. We live in our digital citadels, unchallenged by ideas. Biased reporting closes minds. Journalism is meant to open them.

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After the election we're thinking a great deal about division in our country. We often hear the rallying cry of United We Stand. That's not the strength of America. The miracle of America is Divided We Stand. We are the most diverse nation on Earth and yet we can see past those divisions and agree on this bigger idea of a democratic republic — the bigger idea that we are all Americans, and we all belong here.

Journalism is the medium through which we have that conversation. It's how we understand one another. It's how we respect one another. It's how we have empathy for one another's ideas. The alternative is a new Cold War. This time a civil war.

The purest form of journalism

Walter Cronkite was famous for being the most trusted man in America. Those were the days that there were three television channels, but today we live in a much more skeptical society, and for the most part, that's a good thing. But we would do well in journalism to also examine our own flaws, our own hubris.

A serious dose of humility would do us all a world of good. We bring criticism down upon ourselves when reporters reach for fame rather than public service. We should remember, journalism has nothing whatever to do with being popular. If you report without fear or favor or bias you are very likely to be unpopular; that is our role.

Let me tell you about a Syrian reporter I met in southern Turkey about two months ago. His name is Hadi Abdullah. He is a resident of Aleppo, and never intended to be a journalist, but as the Assad dictatorship and its Russian allies bombed Aleppo, Hadi got a camera and a YouTube account. He decided that the world had to know what was happening. Apparently the Assad regime noticed, because one day he went home to his apartment, opened the door, and a booby trap went off.

The bomb killed his cameraman and took most of one of Hadi’s legs and part of the other. After enduring 12 surgeries, Hadi got in a wheelchair and went back to Aleppo and continued his reporting.

That's a journalist.

Ask: Is it right, fair, honest?

Those are the values that we celebrate here today. He is the purest form of a journalist: a human being striving to help humanity. A reporter who asks of his story, “Is it right, is it fair, is it honest?” Those are the values that made American journalism the best in the world. They are the values that Walter Cronkite lived and defined and they are the values that the Cronkite School is teaching.

The stakes are high. We need great journalists, and I am so encouraged by the work that I've seen being done here. I'm enormously humbled by this honor, and I thank you one and all from the bottom of my heart.

Scott Pelley is anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News and a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Above is an abbreviated version of remarks he gave Monday at Arizona State University in accepting the 2016 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism award. Follow him on Twitter, @ScottPelley.