I spent four years in the news industry. It's admittedly not much, but it does give me a perspective into the business some do not have. Moreover, I spent my college years single-mindedly studying for a career in broadcast journalism (that is, when I was studying at all), so it's fair to say it is my first love of sorts.
Like most first loves, television journalism and I have grown apart. Perhaps I was naive not to notice 10 years ago when I started to pursue it as a career that the profession at times is little more than a veiled (and at times, not so veiled) bully pulpit for the group winning the appropriate ideological support: a corporation, a political group, whatever. And don't get me started on the precious newscast minutes devoted to Britney Spears and the Hollywood Idiot Class.
For these and other reasons, I decided to leave journalism and pursue a more honest profession: Politics.
Yet I still keep a keenly interested eye on the state of journalism in this country, which brings us to veteran newsman Dan Rather's emotional plea for what amounts to a bailout of news organizations in this country. Rather's complaint can be summed up in this clip: "Corporate and political influence on newsrooms, along with the conflation of news and entertainment, has created what Rather called 'the dumbing down and sleazing up of what we see on the news.'"
Rather's solution is for President Obama to develop a commission to ensure this "dumbing" and "sleazing" is stopped, and competent journos are trained.
Put aside for a moment the irony of someone whose hands are far from clean when it comes to degrading the quality of network news now calling the kettles black. Interestingly, I find myself in a position where I cannot disagree with Rather's assessment. In fact, it sounds vaguely familiar.
What is puzzling to me is how Rather, who believes our system of government, "American democracy," depends on a press that is free and independent from that government, also believes the press can (must!) be saved by making it considerably more dependent on said government in the form of this "commission."
This proposal exposes many things about Rather and the state of journalism in America, but the most interesting, the freshest revelation is this: We are currently witnessing a changing of the guard between the Cronkite-Rather-Brokaw era and the new media - a faster, more agile, less-predictable form of journalism that is still pre-adolescent. Rather objects to this new brand of journalism as he apparently holds it responsible for the "dumbing" and "sleazing" of the product of news.
Rather's lamentation is largely misplaced, in my view. While it may be these new mediums are given to extreme brevity which often breeds sensationalism, it is not true this is solely a product of the medium itself; rather (excuse the pun), it is a growing pain brought on by the old guard's lagging ability to adapt. We saw this on full display in June during the Iranian elections, when Twitter was more reliable than CNN. As unbelievable as it may have seemed in 1980, the 24-hour cable news network was too slow and too unwieldy to capture events as they unfolded.
Do I think smart, savvy journos working for large networks can use sites like Twitter well and evolve with the times? Yes, some already do. Yet network news increasingly plays second fiddle to online sources offering on demand timing and complete consumer control of the product.
In the end, I believe folks like Rather know network news is dying, and with it a part of themselves withers away too. For Rather, the self-made son of a ditch-digger from Texas, it is all too painful to watch your first love pass on. You see, he still held on even when he and broadcast news were growing apart. His criticisms of the news, even in spite of their merits, come off now as little more than the sneering of a jealous ex-spouse.
You feel me?
AF
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