Hard news is dying if not dead, replaced by a lot of clickbait. Is there a way to make it good again?
Thanks,
Rob
When do you think news was at it’s best?
The GQ thread on this is discussing the question.
My short take: people get the kind of news they want.
Many people have discovered this one weird trick that the creators of clickbait don’t want you to know about!
You know as well as I do that the answer to this is always: Cronkite.
Stop paying attention to clickbait, start paying attention…and, more importantly money…to hard news sources. Convince other people to do the same.
Nonsense. Edward R. Murrow (and Fred Friendly).
There’s plenty of reputable non clickbait news sources available for free on the internet, many of them have streaming video available as well. You’re not limited to what ever is on your local cable TV.
Nm
News has always been full of bias, gossip, and sensationalism. But there have always been sources of real news among the garbage.
So the principle now is the same as it was a hundred years ago: if you want real news, make the effort to find it.
Well, I do subscribe to PBS News Hour in my YouTube feed (I don’t have cable anymore).
I may be lamenting the Good Old Days when news programs would compete on reputation for trustworthiness that never really existed. I recall hearing that Walter Cronkite was criticized for being uncritical toward NASA, for example. But on the other hand, I did see a clip on Last Week Tonight where an MSNBC (I think) anchor turned away from a Congresswoman talking about an upcoming vote relating to the PATRIOT act to cover some breaking “news” about Justin Bieber.
As was pointed out in the GQ thread, execs can hardly be blamed by serving the public demand, but it would be nice if there were more good news outlets than there seem to be.
Well? What happened to Bieber??
Don’t just leave us hanging there.
As is often the case, the Good Old Days exist mostly in how people remember things.
Edward R. Murrow, who’s often cited as an example of how reporters used to give the public hard news, was also the host for six seasons of Person to Person, a celebrity interview show.
That’s a bit unfair: Murrow interviewed political and social figures (JFK, Dag Hammarskjold, Eleanor Roosevelt, both Trumans, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Nixon, Castro, Hoover) and economic figures (JC Penney) well as entertainment figures, and he included high culture (Salvador Dali, Carl Sandburg, industrial designer Raymond Loewy, classical music figures) as well as low culture. Charlie Rose, the closest comparison nowadays in that regard, is hardly the same as TMZ or People magazine. :dubious:
IMHO a better example is that Murrow’s contemporary in radio was glib gossip columnist Walter Winchell, the true predecessor of Perez Hilton and TMZ if ever there was one. 