Donald Trump has been calling news media’s as “The Enemy of the People,” and “Fake News.” Seemingly, the population should be disgusted by now, of his insults? Yet after two years, he still makes such comments and the people still support him, albeit a minority. So why? What is going on here?
News changed. They used to be reporters of facts. Walter Cronkite would end his broadcast with the phrase; “That’s the way it is.” And it was, the way it is, just the facts, no spin and no propaganda. When President Lyndon Johnson sat watching live TV coverage from inside the White House, one story reports that he seeing Cronkite be negative towards his administration turned to one of aides or secretaries and said; “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” This was the power of this one man. He was honest and he was a journalist. Middle American was not his, he was Middle America personified as one man. Today what do we have?
When President Kennedy was shot, public opinion marked the decline in trust in the American government that has never recovered. Such that today, people would rather believe in some mysterious conspiracy figure called Q then any new media. Partially blame this on the failing education system that refused to teach skepticism and critical thinking to the next generation of students. (Note the blame is spread all over in this blog!)
New divisions where merged into entertainment divisions resulting in an emphasis on short, fast paced, peppy, exposes of the news and not investigations, explanation and description of events. Old school journalism died at the supper hour. They might have some other programs that would do that sort of “News” but from now on we had entertainment as a replacement for news.
Then came the budget cuts. The local reporting dropped. The networks centralized on the Coasts, Atlanta, Washington, New York, Chicago, (while not technically on a coast might as well be treated as such) and Los Angeles. Middle America and Middle Americans, so highly prized by Cronkite and Johnson were forgotten, ignored and treated as a bunch of small town hicks. “Who cares what they think, they stick of manure.” Thus began the great divide between the media elites of the coast and the middle of America where Trump’s followers live and breathe. Adding further insult to the injury, Sinclair is writing editorials to send to all their so-called “News” stations to read as if they were local opinion. When they are certainly nothing but corporate propaganda. You can fool some of the people, some of the time but not all of them all of the time. The people, who trusted the news makers and valued their opinions, having been outright lied to, can obviously see their local media as merely a pawn of the coasts and not representing the local people or the local opinions. Is it any wonder that Cable news viewers are almost exclusively elderly? Young people turn in to the news on the Internet, YouTube and bogs.
Lastly, come Fox News, a special case all on its own. The news division is slightly right wing, while trying to be legitimately a news organization. The programs in between are similarly called news but are deemed as entertainment so the new content is not fact checked or scrutinized anywhere near where it legitimately should be to be called news. Such as the many cases of sexual harassment and the payouts in the multi-million dollar range for sexual harassment. People like Bill O’Rielly and Roger Alies cost the company literally millions in payouts. Commentators like Laura Ingraham, while claiming she was not talking about race, might as have been goose stepping and “Sieg Heiling” across the stage, But then in a wink, wink, nudge, nudge moment, disingenuously proclaimed she is not a racist. Sean Hannity, straight out lies on air. He brings on his own attorney and does not seem to remember that he is a client. Lou Dobbs will call out Obama for mildly rebuking someone on the right interrupting his speech but supports Trump when he banned a journalist from reporting on an event when she is the pool reporter, because she dared to ask questions that the President did not like. As a female she is not allowed to be anything other than a pussy for the Donald to grab. But Lou Dobbs thinks this is perfectly fine. While Michael Flynn was pleading guilty, Fox and Friends felt it was more news worthy to show cute pandas. The list of outrages could go on. But why bother. News media’s do not care what the other guy says, they won’t police themselves. They won’t report on the facts. They just want the comfy jobs where they collect enormous amounts of money for doing almost no work. There are exception but they are the few and not the norm. New media has stopped being about the news, facts and reporting. It has become the shallow, empty place of void uninformed opinions paid for by the highest paying advertiser.
Not my quote but: Journalism 101, when one guy says it’s raining and the other guy says it’s sunny. Your job is not to say it could either raining or sunny. Your job is to look out the window and report on the facts as you can see from your window. Until you return to doing that, your credibility well never recovers. Your reputation will never be more then it is now. All too many people will assume you are indeed fake news and turn to conspiracy central like Alex Jones for their information. The Fourth Estate is dying buy (sic) its own financial success.