Veteran corporate journalists tend to dismiss the Internet age for delivering news with a point of view. In the good old days, you received a broad array of information from a broad array of guests. But nowadays you only read or watch things that conform to your political point of view.
It’s not clear that this is even true, but it’s pretty unconvincing coming from the likes of former Nightline host Ted Koppel (via TVNewser, 4/13/10).
In response to a question from anchor Katty Kay about a new Pew Research survey–in which 64 percent of broadcast news executives believe the biz is heading in the wrong direction–Koppel said: “I think it’s even worse. I think it’s a disaster.”
“I think we’re living through the–I hope–the final stages of what I like to call the age of entitlement…. We now feel entitled not to have the news that we need but the news that we want. We want to listen to news that comes from those who already sympathize with our particular point of view. We don’t want the facts any more.”
FAIR’s landmark study of Nightline found a striking bias towards elite, right-leaning guests: The four most frequent guests wereHenry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Elliott Abrams and Jerry Falwell. Guests were overwhelmingly white and male; few represented public interest groups or werecritics of U.S. policy.
(Koppel once boasted of Kissinger: “Henry Kissinger is, plain and simply, the best secretary of state we have had in 20, maybe 30 years…. I’m proud to be a friend of Henry Kissinger. He is an extraordinary man. This country has lost a lot by not having him in a position of influence and authority.”)
Ina seven-week stretch in early 1995, Koppel spent almost half his airtime discussing the O.J. Simpson trial.During the turbulent protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, Koppel’s program chose to skip the news entirely.
Koppel should, of course, feel free to lecture aboutthe decline of journalism and the problems inherent inhaving multiple sources of information coming from different perspectives availablein the world. But it’s worth remembering that, back in the good old days, Koppel wasn’tdoing much to bring a broad public debate to the national airwaves… unless you’re a big fan of Henry Kissinger.
I’ve been “following the news” for forty years, and I don’t need some elite schmuck like Ted Koppel waxing nostalgic about “the good old days”.
I managed to find out “the facts” the vast majority of the time *despite* the efforts of the corpress, not because of them. You need only look at how they’ve dealt with the video of the murders of innocent Iraqis by a US chopper crew to see that the status quo has been maintained over those decades, don’t you?
I read to know what I don’t know. I may largely agree with folks like Chomsky, Klein, Hedges and Abunimah, but I don’t need them to tell me what to think, and I’d like to think that they don’t want me to read them uncritically.
I also sub to the pathetic Oakland Trib, with its godawful local, national and international coverage (the latter two AP top heavy), and before that the SF Chronic Liar (before they priced me out of their market), in large part to try to figure out what they’re trying *not* to tell me. That’s the case with most mainstream news, isn’t it?
The question arises as to whether Koppel really believes his own propaganda, but it really doesn’t matter, does it? It would only matter if presenting him with the facts would alter his view.
I’d jump at the chance to lay some serious jack on the negatory in that wager, wouldn’t you?
Yeah, I miss the ‘good ol days’ when Ted Koppel could — night after night for months on end, on his original ‘Nightline” program — sensationalize the fate of the US embassy personnel who were held by Iranians, indirectly(?) helping lay the groundwork for the Reagan/conservative ascendancy. I wonder if he ever contrasts their prisoner treatment with the Gitmo prisoner treatment? The Iranians released the US prisoners alive and more-or-less ‘well’… not so much the Gitmo experience.
Koppel is so obviously self-serving in his analysis – – yeah, let’s return to talking suits subtly (or otherwise) reinforcing the status quo in their oh-so avuncular manner, proffering what so often turned out to be false, or one-dimensional information in deference to their plutocratic masters, so that Ted can buy a new toupee and hold court once again.
Now, instead of the big media personalities trying to figure out how to get their version of the truth to us, we’re trying to figure out how reach them to tell them it’s over.
Ted Koppel always reminded me of the Alfred E. Neumann figure of Mad Magazine. “What, me worry?”
Well said, again, FAIR blog.
And most of the comments here are admirable.
Koppel won’t do it, so I had to do it. I put together evidence about Kissinger, from his start as a “refugee” with parents as a boy entering the USA, to his meteoric rise in our military during WW2, intelligence work, bankster associates, and his criminal influence in our government for decades — my entire adult lifetime. He’s the umbilical cord directly to the top banksters, the Rothschilds.
I know, a lot of people don’t want to believe such things. Most people like the top-level power structure to be nebulous, confused, revolving, churning, undefined. BUT they are people, and we can always trace who is the most powerful person in any group of business people. And all of our government and bankstering — internationally — is business. It’s not a secret.
I intend to write a piece on this Kissinger fact for the new website
http://www.EqualPartyUSA.org
But you heard it here first. Meanwhile, the website already offers not only a distillation of our national problems but also The Solution.
Please check it out.
We can achieve a true representative democracy. Soon.