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If TV News Weren't Already Dead..

April 4, 2005

ABC News: TV News Icons Leaving at Rapid Pace

“I think it’s more than a changing of the guard,” said Deborah Potter, a former CBS News correspondent and executive director of the think tank Newslab. “That would suggest that the next set of troops that come in would be waging the same battle.”

Out of context, that is a nice quote. Otherwise, not a very good article.

Although not about TV anchors retiring like flies, here is a better article about the state of the media: an editorial in the Seattle Times written by Amy Goodman and David Goodman.
The Seattle Times: Opinion: Why media ownership matters

from → Media Control
One Comment
  1. Montag permalink
    April 5, 2005 3:42 PM

    Amy Goodman was on Hardballthe other night. She gave a good indictment of the media in comparing Terri Schiavo coverage with Iraq war coverage.. MSNBC – ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’ for March 30

    GOODMAN: Well, David, I would like to go outside the hospice to where the protesters are. I think that the model the media has used is continually going to this small group of a couple dozen protesters—they hold—Randall Terry holds a news conference, they are right there going live to it—should be the model used to cover other protests in this country. We just passed the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Tens of thousands people marched in more than 800 actions around this country. On no major nightly newscast on that second anniversary was a protester interviewed. So, let this be the model for treatment of protesters.

    [David Gregory was guest hosting for Chris Matthews]

    GREGORY: Well, why do you think it different now?

    GOODMAN: I think that we‘re talking about is an extremely conservative media and right now a couple dozen protesters are being heard. I think it‘s a good thing to be heard.

    GREGORY: Now, see, I haven‘t heard that a lot, the conservative mainstream media.

    (CROSSTALK)

    JEFFREY: Well, David, before I came over this afternoon, I got on LexisNexis and I looked at the editorials in “The New York Times,” “The Washington Post”, “The L.A. Times” and “The Chicago Tribune.”

    GREGORY: Yes.

    JEFFREY: Now, they‘ve all taken the position against preserving Terri Schiavo‘s life. They all opposed the bill passed by Congress that Senator Santorum talked about on this show. So, I don‘t think you can say the establishment media, as exemplified by those four major newspapers…

    (CROSSTALK)

    [snip]

    GREGORY: This is what I think is actually significant about where the coverage has gone. I think that people are having serious discussions about life in this country, about the meaning of life, about how we determine whether life is worth living. So, I think this has been an incredibly positive discussion out of a terribly tragic story. Unfortunately, it‘s on her sort of head, but, nevertheless, an important discussion. Don‘t you think?

    (CROSSTALK)

    GOODMAN: David, what I would say about that is that‘s absolutely true. And if only we had these life-and-death discussions when it came to, for example, issues of war and peace, because the corporate media—and I wouldn‘t call it mainstream and I would include all the media, and not just Fox in this—when it came to coverage of war, icing out dissent. And that dissent was the views of the majority of people in this country.

    Let there be such a full discussion…

    GREGORY: I‘m sorry, but what dissent was absent from the coverage about the run-up to the Iraq war?

    GOODMAN: Oh, please.

    I mean, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a media watch group, did a study of the four major nightly newscasts in the two weeks around Powell giving his address to war.

    JEFFREY: David, I—I—I…

    [Heheheh]

    GOODMAN: Three of 393 interviews done were with anti-war representatives. Across the board, people who are opposed to war were iced out of that discussion.

    JEFFREY: Well, I‘ll agree with Amy on this point.

    I think the issue of war and peace is the same issue here. It‘s respect for human life. You have to have grave reasons to go to war, to risk human life, to defend something that is seriously important. I do believe—I agree with you on the importance of this discussion. I believe what Saint Paul said, that God wrote the truth on men‘s hearts. It cannot be erased.

    I think, when people see government allowing the killing of innocent people, whether it‘s an abortion or whether it‘s in Pinellas Park with the attempted killing of Terri Schiavo, they know in their hearts it‘s wrong. And to the degree that we intelligently discuss these things, we look them in the face, we‘re going to move this country in a pro-life direction. That‘s in terms of seriously considering when we go to war and not allowing the state to take the life of Terri Schiavo.

    (CROSSTALK)

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