Last week reminded me that, even during a national crisis, the news media goes for the heat, not the light.
That’s no great insight.
But, I was set off by the specials about Walter Cronkite quickly followed by the uproar over President Obama’s comments about the arrest of Harvard African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.
About 20 years ago I was put on a discussion panel about the news media (totally sans credentials) simply because I had written a letter to the editor that said, in essence, way back when TV news started running teasers about what they were going to tell us later, they weren’t really in the news business anymore.
If you come on the air and say, “Somebody died, but we’re not going to tell who it was until 10 pm” — when you have live air and know the news, but won’t report it — what you’re doing for a living has changed.
What can I say? I was brought up a news purist.
That’s because Walter Cronkite, along with Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and others, were in the news business.
On his latest HBO show, Bill Maher reminded me that news used to be a loss-leader. It was produced as a matter of personal pride and civic duty. No one's in that business anymore.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment