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In Other, Non-Dog News . . .
At its best, broadcast news shines its powerful beacon on problems we have ignored and injustices we can remedy. On May 21, 1968, CBS News broadcast "Hunger in America," a documentary reported by the legendary Charles Kuralt and David Culhane. One of the viewers that night was a U.S. senator named George McGovern.
"It was 1968, and I remember saying, 'Why are they looking at hunger in the United States?' " McGovern recalled in an interview for a recent film on the food stamp program produced by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. McGovern was riveted by a young boy who told CBS that he was "ashamed" that he did not have enough money to buy food at school.
"I said to my family that was watching the documentary with me, 'You know, it's not that little boy who should be ashamed, it's George McGovern, a United States senator, a member on the Committee on Agriculture.' "
From that moment arose one of the most fruitful bipartisan alliances in congressional history: South Dakota Democrat McGovern teamed up with Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole to reform food stamps and expand other nutrition programs. To this day, McGovern and Dole are working together in the cause of ending hunger.
Celebrity stories will always be with us. It's more challenging and infinitely more important to tell the next story of the boy or girl living in the shadows that will shake our consciences and change our country.
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