Where are the journalists?

Gone are the days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite whose voices were familiar and respected and whose personal political leanings were not revealed in their newscasts.  The research to validate the stories they released left consumers confortable with the veracity of their newscasts no matter how reassuring or troubling the information conveyed.

The journalists’ realm at the national level is all but empty.  The seats they once occupied have been filled with the Lauers, Blitzers, Maddows, Limbaughs, and Hannitys, and a slew of others like them.  These celebrities are commentators on political matters whose shows have become entertainment for many adults. These commentators make no effort to provide balanced, or even well substantiated, news stories.  Their stock in trade is shrill, partisan hyperbole, and their perspectives are clearly and redundantly articulated.  Viewers and listeners can choose their entertainment by tuning to the channel or frequency occupied by commentators with whom they agree.   

I’m prepared to argue that this shift from serious reporting on confirmed news events to hysterical commentary often based on imagination is at the root of the deepening philosophical divisions in the country and the world.

Two factors have led to the evolution from journalist to infotainer:  an abundance of available broadcast time, and the ubiquity of publishing opportunity for everyone.  Cable television began the evolution when Ted Turner created CNN, a 24-hour news channel.  Programming grew to fill the newly available hours.

Today any of us can share our thoughts with the world at a moment’s notice, regardless of the quality of those thoughts.  Media’s habit of checking its sources to confirm its suspicions made it unacceptably slow, so today those suspicions form the bases for most of our “news”, and few seem alarmed by the opinion-as-news phenomenon.

Evolution doesn’t stop, however.  Today’s infotainers, craving viewers, readers, and ratings, are systematically alienating the audiences upon which they rely.  Even the most partisan citizens are tiring of the monotonous echo chambers in which some rave about the real and imagined transgressions and inadequacies of our elected officials and others blindly sing the praises of the same people.  How many times a day must one listen to hypotheses about electoral collusion with foreign actors and complaints about clumsily worded “tweets” before I Love Lucy re-runs become an appealing alternative?

Where does it end?  It’s hard to tell, but the trend line suggests that a divided electorate will be ever more certain about its grasp of the truth even as objective information becomes increasingly difficult to isolate from the noisy background.