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The Train Wreck Of American Journalism?
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5 Responses to “The Train Wreck Of American Journalism?”
Romanticizing Big Journalism, are we?
Did Joe Pulitzer or William Randolph Hearst build their newspaper empires on straight news? That ain’t the way I heard it.
Yeah I’m with Dave. I take exception to the idea that the mainstream media has ever reported straight unbiased news (or as the blogger puts it, “truth”).
I think these days, because of the incredibly vast and virtually free exchange of information, we’re more skeptical of traditional news sources.
The filter of the establishment, like the NYT, the big three or even CNN, has been exposed for what it is. A filter. By necessity it’s a filter that bows to big corporate interests that they require for survival and profits.
While I don’t think Americans have become smarter due to this increase in information and viewpoints, I think we’ve at least come to realize that there is no such thing as an unbiased source.
If you can’t get the truth you should at least be able to get truthiness.
I think she’s right on. Unlike the young pups, I remember watching Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley. Were they unbiased – no. They’re men, not robots, but neither were they partisan hacks for one side or the other.
And they led with stories based on their importance to the public, not on the ratings. The greed thing is where she really nails it. In those days, Anna Nicole, if she was mentioned at all, would get 20 seconds at the end of the broadcast, not the lede and newspapers offered more than two paragraphs cribbed from the wires that are repeated in every McPaper in America. They actually spent money on investigative journalism back then and wrote with a point of view – which by the way is not the same as bias.
I blame media consolidation. I think if we rolled back the rules that allowed the mega-corps to form in the first place, we could save the medium.
And a few posts higher on this very blog we get….The row at The View. I guess that train wreck is making it’s way onto this site as well? LOL