What I've been looking for

By BOB GREENE

News organizations and public opinion pollsters occasionally take surveys to try to find the answer to a modern-day question:

Why do so many people say they distrust the news media?

There is an easier way to think about that question than conducting surveys. Simply take a look at the life of Ernie Pyle.

Pyle - the best-known war correspondent in U.S. history - was killed while covering World War II more than 50 years ago, yet his name remains synonymous with the very best that journalism aspires to.

A quiet man who came out of small-town Indiana, Pyle became the one person whom Americans trusted to serve as their eyes and ears on the front lines.

A new biography of Pyle by journalist and historian James Tobin is titled Ernie Pyle's War. The book's subtitle is "America's Eyewitness to World War II," and that, in a single phrase, goes a long way in explaining why Pyle was who he was.

Americans knew that they could count on Pyle to witness the war for them - and, through his syndicated newspaper column, to tell them what he saw and heard.

Such a simple premise.

Yet, in our contemporary media age, it seems to get lost. There is a disturbing us-versus-them tone that permeates the way much of the public seems to view the press these days.

It's as if the public believes the news media come from a different psychological country than they do, that the people and the press carry different passports.

In Ernie Pyle's world, a reporter went to the places he did because he was a surrogate for his readers - their representative. They'd be there if they could, finding things out, but because they couldn't be there, he was there for them.

As interesting as the biographical details in Tobin's book are excerpts from letters written to Pyle during World War II. A housewife from Massachusetts wrote to Pyle: "I don't ever expect to know you, but I feel that I already know you, and it's all quite comfortable." From a man in New York:

"I am average in antecedents, education, position ... just plugging along trying to do the best I can, see my family through, be as useful as I can and somehow hope the final score will not be too bad.

"Through the years, like most everyone, I've often wondered what it was all about, sometimes inclined to be cynical, always with a big question mark, in fact many of them. I've read the ancient and modern writers, listened to the orators and was not satisfied. I knew life was good, though well mixed up, and looked for something tangible that would prove my point.

"Without any label, I have found the outline of what I have been looking for in your clear pictures of human lives. It has helped me a lot.

"This is a bit cryptic but I'm sure it will convey my thoughts to you without being spelled out. Please accept my appreciation of a series of lessons in life."

Far from considering Pyle to be a distant and lofty figure, an important man with a celebrated byline, Pyle's readers seemed to see him as a fellow they could count on, a man they could turn to. From Pittsburgh:

"Mr. Pyle, my sweetheart is now in North Africa. I don't know if he is dead or alive. I've tried so hard to get word of him. I work in a defense plant here. Sometimes I work two shifts without any sleep. I have two children and have gone with this boy three years.

"Mr. Pyle, if it would be possible for you to find out if he is close to you, tell him the girls Joan and Shirley and waiting for him and still love him. It would help him I know. If you see him tell him I love him and am waiting. Sir a few words from you would give him courage. He is a good boy one of the best.

"Please Mr. Pyle keep writing about the boys as you have been doing. Your words bring happiness to thousands just like me."

If the people who report and edit the news could somehow get back that kind of feeling from the people - the readers, the viewers, the listeners - they are reporting to and editing for ... if we could all find again that elementary understanding of what we do, of who we are, in the end, working for ...

From a reader in New York: "Would you be so kind as to look up my boy and let us know in your paper how he is getting along."

The people who read Ernie Pyle thought they knew him. They did.

Chicago Tribune