Does The American News Industry Need To Be Completely Rebuilt?

[GoLeft TV]

#AskROF: “Do you think news as we know it in America needs to be redefined? These days its propaganda, critical news is ignored and they are like TMZ.”

Farron Cousins answers this on Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV.

[Cayenne]

1. The need to be bypassed by alternatives

Where would we be without social media and 'alternative' news? Cable news only makes me angry and just keep it shut off. I think most of the rest of the rest of the M$M are going to get their comeuppance as people keep tuning out the big propaganda purveyors.

[grasswire]

2. I have heard it said by a solid news man that unions need to be ...

publishing papers again. Lefty papers, hard-hitting and truthful.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Not this shit again...

There seems to be this myth that the news was always Walter Cronkite.

Well, it wasn't. Long before TV, and even radio, NYC had around a hundred or so dailies and weeklies, each aimed at its own crowd, and with the news slanted that way. The Times and Herald Tribune tried to stay above the fray, but didn't always make it.

Does no one remember Hearst? The news empire that almost single-handedly got us into the Spanish-American War?

Fun facts about 19th century Yellow Journalism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

How about Walter Winchell? He became a gossip columnist after first being a huge voice for getting us into WWII but then becoming insanely anti-communist.

The extreme love shown to people like Olbermann is misplaced-- Olbermann, Maddow and the like are no more journalists than Drudge. They are columnists and opinionators. The fact that we agree with their opinions is largely irrelevant.

An old journalism prof who was the retired managing editor of a large NYC daily told the class flat out that there was no such thing as "pure" journalism-- every medium has a slant. As long as we knew that, it was our responsibility to figure out where the truth lay.