(Hello there: Dr. E. here, and Robert Stein, follows. As many have noted, “fat free’ is also tasteless and doesnt stick to the ribs. So too what I’d call ‘fat-free/ fact-free news.” No nourishment there.
So much of the incessant network/cable ‘news’ we receive 24/7 is no longer ‘new’ nor is it what I call ‘actual-factual news’ and thus over these last ten years, ‘the news’, its origins and true context’ has become increasingly suspect…. ripe for others to report investigatively about the underflying and low flying funds, and the actual traceable genealogy of various quacks, hacks and money-bags that skew and influence those behind and around newscasters, television affiliates, for profit networks, public non-profit networks, and others. Investigations by the stalwart of the news media’s ink holes and egg and sperm donors would actually be the real news today.
Here Robert Stein puts forth some solution and encouragement to others to invest, investigate and report. Robert is one of our venerable cobloggers here at TMV who has nearly ‘seen it all’… former head of the Conde Nast empire, his oversights are not mere opinion, but with a deep view on human nature in the publishing biz.
dr.e
managing editor, TMV)
Jay Rockefeller, Jon Stewart, Alexis de Tocqueville and my teenage grandson combine to provoke second thoughts about the First Amendment.
In frustration, the West Virginia Senator tells a committee, “I hunger for quality news…There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX and to MSNBC: ‘Out. Off. End. Goodbye.’ It would be a big favor to political discourse; our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people.”
On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart goes into an over-the-top riff on Glenn Beck’s campaign to prove that George Soros is plotting to overthrow the government, offering more plausible goofy proof that Beck’s boss Rupert Murdoch is actually doing that.
All this comes after a call from my grandson to exchange ideas about a high-school assignment on the subject of whether there should be more regulation of TV.
For a First Amendment almost-absolutist, this brings up de Tocqueville’s take in “Democracy in America” almost two centuries ago:
“I confess that I do not entertain that firm and complete attachment to the liberty of the press which is wont to be excited by things that are supremely good in their very nature. I approve of it from a consideration more of the evils it prevents than of the advantages it insures.”
His reservation was that, while unfettered competition guarantees political freedom, it also fosters a low level of journalism–“vulgar” and “coarse” were the words he used.
Given the history of totalitarianism since then, we are well-advised to struggle along in this imperfect condition. Eternal banality, as well as vigilance, may be the true price of liberty.
While there is no denying that Murdoch’s organs are boils on the backside of American journalism, they can’t be lanced by official surgery. They can be treated only by the palliatives of better news from other sources in the hope that truth will emerge, as Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand put it, from “a multitude of tongues.”
MORE.