| Topic Name: |
Bill O'Reilly---Journalist? |
| Message Name: |
Any of us wonder why? |
| Date Posted: |
06/15/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
Was a journalist with opinions, now he's a blowhard who likes the loofah. |
| Message: |
Have you stopped to wonder why the public at large has no clear idea of who's a journalist and who's not? Maybe it's because we (as an industry)have blurred those lines so well for so long that there is no such thing anymore (in all praticality).
Examples: (1) Morning "news" programs such as Today, GMA, Fox & Friends, etc. which have relatively no news value whatsoever, unless you consider cooking segments, book deals, movie trailers, and fashion important "news" of the day. (2) 24 "news" programs that recycle the exact same lousy bit of information over and over, complete with "experts" to decipher or explain what it really means. Meanwhile, those type of segments turns into shouting matches and games of one upsmanship between talking heads. But hey, it's "news", because the event is topical, right? (3) Local stations that feel the need to have 8 hours a day of local "news" coverage. Many do 3 hours in the morning in a much more amatuerish fashion than the networks, but have many of the same objectives. Do the viewers really need local news programming for 3 hours in the morning, 30 minutes at noon, and then another 90 minutes to 2 hours in the early evening, followed by 30 minutes before they hit the sack at night?
As long as we, as an industry, continue to give credibilty to "experts" or "pundits", provide substancial airtime for those type of people, and continue to manufacture "news" events, we have no one to blame except ourselves if people don't know who we are. On the other hand, maybe they do know who we are and just don't care.
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