In the movie “Broadcast News”, from 1987, Jane Craig is making a speech about the decline of journalism. She mentions something about “the profound impact of ‘Entertainment Tonight’.”
These guys are journalists in the same way that Entertainment Tonight anchors are journalists.
They gather the news from other sources and make fun of it. They aren’t investigating anything, they aren’t breaking news, they aren’t doing journalism in any sense.
Wile this is true, they seem to have a better understanding of both which stories are more important, and what the implications those stories may have for the future.
And in a large sense, mainstream news now competes with them, and it becomes more entertainment and less news. So it’s not too far off to say the CBS, NBC, etc. news have become poor quality copies of The Daily Show.
For one example, a couple of years ago The Daily Show and The Stephen Colbert show combined to do a brilliant expose of how easy it is for politicians to legally convert donations from PACs and Super PACS to their own personal funds in a way that was legally untraceable. It was hilarious, biting satire and also EXTREMELY informative, in a way that mainstream media almost never are.
Here’s the relevant data, looks like it was mainly a Stephen Colbert project, but damn, it was brilliant.
Profit was always a factor, but like much else in America the media has largely become one-dimensionally obsessed with profit, with nothing else even a consideration. If pushing filler or lies makes them more money they’ll do it and nothing else, because they don’t have any pride in their work, no concern for their country, no concern for the truth or the future or their reputation or anything else whatsoever except profit.
Except for Fox which as a propaganda machine has pushing right wing extremism as a motive instead, which is hardly an improvement.
It’s my understanding that they usually copy each other, or just copy the press release of the company/government/other organization involved in the story.
Thomas Jefferson on newspapers:
Sounds familiar.
I agree with both of these. All of the Comedy news shows do what comedy basically does, force us to think of issues in a new way or at least just make us think.
It just bugs me when people call it news because it’s not. It’s certainly something…but news it ain’t
Take 3 networks with all the advertising dollars and divide that into a bazillion news sources.
There’s no money for investigative reporting. It died years ago.
“If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.”
-Edward R. Murrow
Sure, but Edward would lead with the Jesus story.
As a matter of interest that piece of “news” was all over the daytime broadcasts here in the UK. By the evening it was pushed off even the ‘and also’ at the end.
That said I do fear that our news broadcasts are heading the same way.
I think that the TV version of national/international news has just become a habit after so many years. I get most of the news from online sources, so could likely just quit watching and not miss it a bit. Last night had more inanity about football, an item about the Portland Airport carpet being removed (WTF?), and the demise of the Skymall Magazine. To quote Ralphie’s father “That’s real news, not that politics crap!”
Most news reporting today is dumbed down shit.
On my extremely pathetic local newspaper’s online site, it’s challenging to find a story without at least one typo. Amusingly enough, a story from yesterday about the Genesee County Literacy Coalition started out with this clunker of a sentence:
In our tour of the Oregonian offices, they told us that reporters send in stories via iPhone. What I gathered from what we were told, fact checking is slim or even bypassed, as editors are under pressure to get the story published. I guess they figure retractions are just as good as fact checking. While I expect this kind of shoddy reporting from Fox, it’s discouraging to find it in pubs that have won Pulitzers.
I’m amazed that the lead in to Kathie Lee and Hoda mentions they are being brought to us by NBC news. Their show consists of them drinking wine, talking about cleaning your closet, and doing makeovers on random people. The hour before that is three or four people talking over each other while showing YouTube videos and stories from reddit.
That is what the Today Show has turned into. And yes, I remember J Fred Muggs, but they still had actual news.
I believe it.
On several occasions, the Flint Gerbil has posted stories on the same event or crime, by two different reporters - and with a differing set of facts. :rolleyes:
I did once email the editor/ “director of news content” Marjory Raymer, pointing out that two stories on the same event had been posted on the same day - but with wildly different facts. I got a “thanks for bringing that to our attention” email in response, but both stories stayed up unchanged. So clearly my local news can’t be trusted to report facts correctly, and they don’t even care.
I also miss actual news, instead of the infotainment crap I see presented on the major networks.
I sometimes wonder what news to even trust for a completely unbiased viewpoint. I just take in enough to catch the jist of it and move on cause news is mostly depressing or upsetting anyway.
I sometimes can tolerate Alex Jones but he’s quite difficult to listen to in the cubicle next to your boss… Sometimes he just sounds like a raving lunatic but while I ‘get’ what he’s saying most of the time, other times I can’t help but think he’s trying to incite something; for all I know, he may be right and should be trying to incite something.
I keep an open mind and believe almost nothing that I hear and maybe about 50% of what I see. that sounds contradictory. 
I heard recently that Alex is retiring, I see that David has been doing the show quite often recently so maybe David is taking over as lead host???
Maybe once a week or two weeks or a month I’ll hook up the antenna to the TV dongle and watch the news to catch up but other than that I can’t be bothered with what the networks are spewing out as news.
political Look up “Alberta Premiere Redford” Doesn’t she look like a female “boy from Brazil”
The fact that TV “news” is not news is not news. Whatsamatter? Slow post day?