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USA Edition | Today Is Monday, March 22, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Monday, March 22, 2010 |
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| Hari Sreenivasan | « Scan Content In The Order It Was Published » | CPB: Time To Fully Fund The Responsible Adults | |
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Brian Williams, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather
We may not be quite at the end of the broadcast news era, but you can sure as hell see it from here.
While the network news operations still go through the motions, little remains of the probative era in broadcast news. We may not be quite at the end of the broadcast news era, but you can sure as hell see it from here. The reasons are known, for television news is dying as much by inattention as by intent — the victim of failed leadership, failed journalism and flatulent greed.
Although there remain network programs that call themselves newscasts, the amount of probative news content continues to diminish in favor of content more attractive to entertainment seeking viewers. While it is clear that television news has already died at the local level, the occasional coverage of important stories at the network level masks the overall downward trend in legitimate news content.
Some believe that legitimate broadcast news came to an end the day the first feature segment appeared on a network news broadcast during the Walter Cronkite era at CBS when Charles Kuralt’s On The Road series became a regular feature. For others it may have been when overseas bureaus were closed, or when news content was cut from 26 to 21 minutes, or when features and information stories filled 20% of the nightly news hole. There are many ways to avoid seeing the obvious, but the reality goes unchanged.
Others may not want to believe that network newscasts will come to an end until 100% of content is non news, or even only when the programs are canceled to make room for infomercials. But this much is certain: The end of legitimate network broadcast news is either at hand — or already passed. But from a journalistic perspective, the fat lady sang many years ago. For many — expensive sets, television stars, demographics and pandering to those seeking entertainment, not news, were the final blows. So, it’s over. It’s a wrap. -30-
It couldn’t come at a worse time for the nation. With so many newspapers cutting back and/or going out of business, what matters most to the American nation increasingly goes uncovered, unsaid, unreported. While the American reset seems destined to restore governmental regulation and oversight of many industries including media, even were broadcasting to be restored to the control of responsible adults, it may well prove to be too late for television itself, let alone broadcast journalism.
Those caught in the great American reset now underway will have to find their way in the flickering shadow of what was once the most popular, most immediate and and most influential news medium. The stars, substance, values and impact of broadcast news have already departed the stage. Only those Ed Murrow once described as the freaks and the clowns remain to fill in the gaps between long clusters of pharmaceutical advertisements.
What began with so much promise and energy has been drained of substance and milked dry by MBA thinking and failed leadership. The television news era is over. Only the up front shell game continues for behind the scenes the muscle and sinew that once dominated the news business is all but gone. As long as its profitable, entertainment programming styled to appear as news will continue — little more than a shadow of what was once America’s most preferred and most trusted source of relevant, credible and probative news and information.
CBS Newsmen: Marvin and Bernard Kalb
Their names and faces were familiar to Americans in eastern cities, on the open prairies and beyond the Rocky mountains. Among them were newspaper reporters, wire service correspondents and former radio newsmen. They were very different people — men and women who mostly hailed from middle class America but spoke in contrasting accents.
But along with hundreds of others, the network television reporters, correspondents and anchors who made television news relevant, probative and credible shared an overriding commitment to being responsible brokers of information. Each of them instinctively knew what mattered most. Fidelity to fact was their mantra, being credible their mission.
We remember them well: Chet Huntley, Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, David Brinkley, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Marlene Sanders, Nancy Dickerson, Marvin Kalb, Linda Ellerbee, Pauline Frederick, Frank Reynolds, Barbara Walters, Bernard Kalb, Eric Severeid, and Connie Chung.
NBC News' Chet Huntley and David Brinkley
In their time, the nightly network news broadcasts were an essential part of the American experience — part of what it meant to be a responsible citizen. Fueled by solid journalism and well defined standards, broadcast journalism parlayed advancing technology, worldwide reach and immediacy into the what became the nation’s most admired and most popular source of daily news.
By the late 1960s, network television news had become the single most powerful news medium — one that offered a wide range of news product from penetrating documentaries, to gavel to gavel coverage of major events, important hearings, political conventions and both evening and late night news summaries. During the halcyon years, network news covered three horrible assassinations: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. The nation’s evolving space program was cover live including the Apollo 11 Lunar landing and return to Earth.
Broadcast news mattered because it was part of everyone’s daily life. But television news, especially the high quality, credible and authoritative network news broadcasts had become the dominant and most preferred news medium. By the time the nation had become embroiled in the Viet Nam war, television had become the single most influential force in defining American attitudes, choosing presidents, and questioning government.
Walter Cronkite, Managing Editor, The CBS Evening News
When Walter Cronkite went to Viet Nam in 1968, the nation was on edge. Although presidents of both parties had pursued what proved to be a foolish notion about stopping the spread of communism in Asia, growing protests at home narrowed presidential options. Then, when CBS Walter Cronkite editorialized one night that the war had been lost, President Lyndon Johnson knew the end was at hand. At that time, network television news had reached its apogee in terms of influence. For many Americans, including the President, when Walter Cronkite no longer supported the Viet Nam effort, the war was lost.
ABC newsman/anchor Frank Reynolds
CBS was not alone in its news quality or influence, for NBC was more than competitive in the early years. So competitive that the Huntley-Brinkley report was the ratings leader for many years — a reality that prompted CBS to end Douglas Edward’s career by replacing him with a hard-nosed newspaper reporter in the person of Walter Cronkite.
Until the deregulation of broadcasting in the early 1980s, network television news was one of the most powerful forces in the nation. While ABC seemed uncertain of its role, or what to do with its very young but highly qualified anchor talent Peter Jennings, it joined the race in earnest to better compete against NBC’s Huntley-Brinkely and CBS with its powerful and highly respected correspondents including the Kalb brothers, Bernard and Marvin, and Roger Mudd among many others.
And now the end may be neigh. The day of reckoning unwelcome. But one need only turn on television to confirm the horrible truth: The role of broadcast news in the American experience has run its course.
Now what?
