What Became of Honest Reporting?
There was a time; it does not seem so long ago, that when you turned on TV news, as almost everybody did, you could hear Walter Cronkite on CBS, Huntley Brinkley on NBC and a pretty well-known figure such as Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters on ABC. And when they reported news, they all said pretty much the same thing. Nobody doubted their word, and you never heard a spokesman for a different point of view cutting in to create doubt.
Walter Cronkite was called "the most trusted man in America." The perversion of today's media would likely appall him.
There were no cable outlets tailoring their reporting to please their audience and slanting the facts on many stories to attract more viewers. Newspapers, with notable exceptions, also told the same stories, although their editorial pages reflected the points of view of their publishers. Nobody could envision the avalanche of opinion blogs are primary sources for so many people and are often blatantly biased.
We recall that era nostalgically in view of what is happening to media today. It began innocently. Ted Turner launched CNN in 1980, the first full-time cable channel. The station did news, but also featured interview shows that were often strong on opinion. Then came Fox, the fulfillment of a dream Roger Ailes talked about for years. He felt the mainstream media leaned Democratic, and he wanted an outlet for Republicans to counter it. Ailes started with a claim of "fair and balanced" but over the years Fox has turned into a Propaganda arm of the Republican party. It got so bad that in defending a lawsuit its lawyers took the position that Fox was an "entertainment' outlet, rather than a conventional news channel. In other words, people should not take us seriously when we damage a reputation. We are just having fun.
Before Fox, TV news was held to a high standard. The mainstream channels were careful to be accurate. But since Fox, all manner of podcasts and blogs have appeared, as a group commanding a sizeable part of the total audience. And prominent political figures have become increasingly reckless in making unfounded statements which can harm reputations and even endanger people. The Trump administration has adopted the outlandish position of accusing news makers they don't like of criminal actions.
The New York Times recently highlighted the problem, using the case of the Brown University murders, in which an immigrant was initially identified as a suspect, but quickly cleared. But by then various outlets and public figures had jumped on the bandwagon, endangering the innocent man's life. The Times complained that those spreading falsehoods are rarely held to account. For many people truth has become what they want it to be. The result is too many people with low or misinformation. That can be worse than no information at all. How else can you explain Donald Trump?
It may be far-fetched, but we would encourage a New Year's resolution to address this media crisis, perhaps even making the spreading of deliberate misinformation some kind of crime.
