Who's responsible? Blame the media.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe

WE LIVE in an age where it has become commonplace to refuse to take responsibility for one's actions. In times past, taking responsibility for what you did was considered the proper thin, to do. Ladies and gentlemen could do nothing else. If you were caught in a lie or a deception or scandalous behavior, you didn't blame your parents, your friends, your teachers, or the press; you acted like an adult and accepted responsibility for your actions. In olden, albeit sexist, times, it was considered the manly thing to do. Fess up and take your punishment. Do the right thing.

Today, that is the last thing most people want to do. It's always the other person's fault: a tyrannical, unfair boss, mean-spirited spouse, abusive parent, racist police, conspirators in government, or, most of all, the liberal-biased, tabloid-tainted mass media. Blame anyone you can find except yourself.

People caught taking drugs blame the dealer and the media for their habit. Teenagers caught in an unexpected pregnancy blame their parents, the schools, and the media. Parents whose children are disrespectful to them blame the schools and the media. A pair of brothers accused of murder blame their parents for abusing them and the media for holding them up to public scorn and ridicule. Even baseball team owners, who couldn't manage their own affairs and destroyed a season and killed the 1994 World Series in the process, blamed the players, umpires, and finally the media for their incompetence. They were blameless. It wasn't the owners' problem that they had mismanaged and abused their authority. It wasn't their fault that they destroyed the game through avarice and arrogance. It wasn't their fault that the National Labor Relations Board slapped them on their collective wrist for unfair labor practices. It was the sportswriters who failed to make their position clear to the public. It was the media's fault they were losing money.

Since adults have found that they can get away with murder simply by blaming someone else for their inexcusable actions, it shouldn't be surprising that youngsters are using the same kind of reasoning, finding the media the best kind of scapegoat.

The majority of kids interviewed in a recent survey charged that far too much bedhopping by unmarried TV characters was responsible for kids being sexually active. It wasn't their fault. Blame the tube. The idea that one could blame someone else for everything from premarital sex to talking back to your...