A carefully crafted mythos has long surrounded the news. It was always first and foremost about entertainment, of course, but we we told ourselves that we watched and read the news to be informed, and the news providers assured us that was what they were doing. We told ourselves that journalists were fair, objective, and balanced, and they assured us they were.
Of course, all of this was a collective fantasy, as even some of the old-timers themselves have admitted in recent years. Journalists were always obsessed with getting "the scoop," but information moved slower then, so they had the luxury of taking time to check up on their hot tip before someone else scooped them. Nowadays, with our mind-boggling array of information portals, information can be disseminated so rapidly and so abundantly that we seem to place less value in information. Therefore, if it turns out that a juicy tidbit is false, it's so easy and quick to distribute the correction widely that we don't seem to care nearly as much when journalists are wrong these days. Because the ramifications for screwing up are so much less severe than they used to be, news rooms put much less effort into fact-checking and corroborating sources; indeed, even the largest networks have drastically reduced the staffing in their newsrooms over the past decade.
The end result is that the reporter is a dying breed. There's no such thing as a factual, informative article anymore. Everyone is an "analyst" these days, which is a polite industry term for "essayist." It's a rare article indeed in which the author doesn't insert some obviously slanted commentary. What's most amazing to me is that personal opinions are rife even in articles without by-lines! What's the point of interjecting one's own ideas in an anonymous article? But it happens constantly.
"Nonstopdrivel" wrote:
I agree, mostly.
You are correct that it has always been about in large part, in primary part, entertainment. So was Shakespeare, for that matter.
However, the quality of the entertainment has declined dramatically. (And done so, in my opinion, because the standards of those who would be entertained has dramatically declined.)
One benefit of having done a PhD in history is that I spent a lot of time reading old newspapers, pamphlets, and other pieces of the "popular" press from both sides of the Atlantic.
Technological limitations being what they were in the late 18th and 19th centuries, there was much less "visual" press, but there was no shortage of tabloid and hack journalism/unresearched opining back then. (And, though I haven't done specific research in other places or periods, I expect it has always been the case). The lack of "instant information" may have allowed more deliberation than now, but the lack of "speedy transportation" also made the collection of information much more problematic.
But in general, both "essayists" and "reporters" did a better job. The difference between a Montaigne or a Johnson or a Woolf and even those who are thought to be "best" among today's essayists/commentators is night and day.
And so was the quality of writing for the "masses".
It wasn't just the elites who got the better writing. It was everyone.
Take a look at Thomas Paine's
Common Sense or Ri
ghts of Man sometime. Paine scared the crap out of a lot of people on both sides of the ocean. Why? Because everyday people were interested in reading and thinking about and might act upon what Paine wrote.
I once taught a course where students were assigned big chunks of both Edmund Burke and Paine. I expected to have trouble getting them to read Burke because he wrote like a British MP of the time wrote, and late 18th century muckety-muck speech is an acquired taste. But forget Burke; I couldn't even get them interested in spending enough time to get into Paine.
I love to bash the media. Especially twits like ESPN and CNN. But if I'm being honest, the reason they keep doing what they are doing is because that's what most people want them to do.
We say we want better. But we reveal our true preferences not by our words, but by our actions. And we keep watching the bastards.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)