6 ms·

Great quote: > The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be

by yboris 6y ago

Great quote: > The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted."

tpmx 6y ago
We all seem to think/assume that newspapers in general used to be honest and fair in the past. I think I got that idea from Movies/TV as a kid in the 80s/90s. It was a very common and prominent theme. The hero(ine) was very often a print journalist. Think e.g. Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane in the 90s.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  I think “All the President's Men” helped a lot in that regard. But when I was a student in communication you learn really quickly that it has seldom been like that over the last 160 years. Sex, Blood and Sport sell (and Scandals). This is the three S rules. Early french newspaper from the industrial revolution (circa. 1860, Paris) were already promoting and enforcing short and concise sentences. And a populist and demagogic style to sell more. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper)#Description_and_contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper)#D... and others.
  - ccsnags 6y ago
    There is a narrative about journalism being a field by and for the everyman. I think that the exact opposite is true. It has become an institution dominated by the dominant. I like the idea that there is some hard-nosed blue collar people out there trying to speak truth to power but it seems that they speak for power because it pays.
- UncleSlacky 6y ago
  "All The President's Men" probably had an influence. Ed Asner (as "Lou Grant") too.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  So you thought Lois Lane was honest and fair? She was literally dating the story. Or Clark Kent. He was Daily Planet reporter by day, newsmaker by night. Both of these people would not be considered ethical journalists today. And don't mention that one co-worker is living an adopted second persona to seduce and/or spy on a fellow reporter. Also, his immigration status and all the forms he must have faked to get his job and file his taxes. If Clark Kent was real he would almost certainly be locked up somewhere.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    in lois's defense, I think she got pretty deep before she realized she was dating the superhero she was covering. peter parker was a lot worse, covering his own alter-ego!
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >peter parker was a lot worse, covering his own alter-ego! Worse by conventional journalistic standards. But since the 60s we've had "New Journalism" and so-called "Gonzo Journalism", were the journalist meddles with their subject, and even reports on himself...
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Foundlings below the age of five on US Soil are US Citizens. Clark Kent is a legal American citizen with adoptive parents -- no need to fake anything!
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Except that he isn't human and, while found, clearly entered the US illegally. A lawyer would have had him claim refugee status. You cannot just throw a child over a border and have them "found" by someone. Foundling is a commonlaw principal to cover situations where it is not possible to determine a child's history and it is therefore assume they were born locally. It doesn't trump obvious evidence to the contrary.
- jccalhoun 6y ago
  A lot of people think journalism has always strived to be impartial and that couldn't be farther from the truth. In the 19th and early 20th centuries newspapers were explicitly biased like Fox News and MSNBC.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    See also "yellow journalism". Particularly common in the early 1900s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
- estaseuropano 6y ago
  Why all this hate on journalists and newspapers? It is a demanding and very underpaid profession and the whole industry is squeezed. A few owners sadly own large parts of the media and push an agenda, but I really do not want to imagine a world where newspapers don't exist anymore. They are not perfect and its easy to criticise articles after the fact, but its incredibly difficult to pump out timely and relevant news. There often is no single truth but rather many perspectives and I don't think we can expect a journalist paid a barely livable wage and working long hours to keep up the highest quality standards every day all day. Please have some respect for the role this media plays, holding authority to account and getting by and large useful and correct information to the public. That doesn't mean you need to trust every written word, but comments like yours that newspapers are not/don't try most of the time to be honest and fair is simply not correct or fair.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    You appear to be attributing a position and an intention to the parent, and then attacking it. The attribution does not seem warranted.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    They don't hold authority to account unless it is the opposite party of the side they represent. As you said, a few owners control virtually all of corporate media. And those owners are not unbiased. And those owners and the people they hire in management have agendas. And that trickles all the way down to the newsroom floor, just like it does in any company. At any rate, journalism needs a business model revamp for the 21st century. Substack is part of the answer, but other things need to be tried too.
- tobmlt 6y ago
  I want to recommend “his girl Friday” here, as there is some news related manipulation of the public / politics in play, (back in 1940) but really it’s a second or third act to the real star (the “punched up” dialogue).
  - jhbadger 6y ago
    Or the earlier "The Front Page" (1931) which is what "His Girl Friday" was a remake of (except by making one of the reporters a woman and the ex of the editor).
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Or the subsequent Switching Channels (1988), which is a remake of The Front Page/His Girl Friday!
- Spooky23 6y ago
  The 80s and 90s were peak “Journalism”, where they tried to make it like law school or something. Yellow journalism was the norm in the past. We lived through a unique and fairly amazing era.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Wouldn’t you put 60s and 70s in there too? It was the heyday of national broadcasting before 24hr news took over with the combo of cnn + appetite for Gulf War I 24 hr coverage that cemented its place as news source?
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      It was, but the 60s and 70s were the age of old school newspapermen. They started dying out in the 80s.
mc32 6y ago
From the reporter fired by the NYT following an unflattering daily beast, albeit full of apparent fabrications, story[1]: “. ..But we’re still jackals. We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. At the highest levels, like Watergate, it’s about digging for the truth, no matter what corrupt government official it hurts. At the basest level, when even the crummiest scandal erupts, you have to repeat the accusation, even if you know it’s untrue or half-true, in order to explain the truth — no matter how much you may personally like the source you’re hurting.” [1] https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-one-introduction-57eb6a3e0d95 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...
tshaddox 6y ago
And instead conveyed radio as being able to instantly and simultaneously exert massive influence over the emotions of a huge number of people.

by yboris 6y ago

Great quote: > The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted."

tpmx 6y ago

We all seem to think/assume that newspapers in general used to be honest and fair in the past. I think I got that idea from Movies/TV as a kid in the 80s/90s. It was a very common and prominent theme. The hero(ine) was very often a print journalist. Think e.g. Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane in the 90s.

johnchristopher 6y ago
I think “All the President's Men” helped a lot in that regard. But when I was a student in communication you learn really quickly that it has seldom been like that over the last 160 years. Sex, Blood and Sport sell (and Scandals). This is the three S rules. Early french newspaper from the industrial revolution (circa. 1860, Paris) were already promoting and enforcing short and concise sentences. And a populist and demagogic style to sell more. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper)#Description_and_contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper)#D... and others.
- ccsnags 6y ago
  There is a narrative about journalism being a field by and for the everyman. I think that the exact opposite is true. It has become an institution dominated by the dominant. I like the idea that there is some hard-nosed blue collar people out there trying to speak truth to power but it seems that they speak for power because it pays.
UncleSlacky 6y ago
"All The President's Men" probably had an influence. Ed Asner (as "Lou Grant") too.
sandworm101 6y ago
So you thought Lois Lane was honest and fair? She was literally dating the story. Or Clark Kent. He was Daily Planet reporter by day, newsmaker by night. Both of these people would not be considered ethical journalists today. And don't mention that one co-worker is living an adopted second persona to seduce and/or spy on a fellow reporter. Also, his immigration status and all the forms he must have faked to get his job and file his taxes. If Clark Kent was real he would almost certainly be locked up somewhere.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  in lois's defense, I think she got pretty deep before she realized she was dating the superhero she was covering. peter parker was a lot worse, covering his own alter-ego!
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >peter parker was a lot worse, covering his own alter-ego! Worse by conventional journalistic standards. But since the 60s we've had "New Journalism" and so-called "Gonzo Journalism", were the journalist meddles with their subject, and even reports on himself...
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Foundlings below the age of five on US Soil are US Citizens. Clark Kent is a legal American citizen with adoptive parents -- no need to fake anything!
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Except that he isn't human and, while found, clearly entered the US illegally. A lawyer would have had him claim refugee status. You cannot just throw a child over a border and have them "found" by someone. Foundling is a commonlaw principal to cover situations where it is not possible to determine a child's history and it is therefore assume they were born locally. It doesn't trump obvious evidence to the contrary.
jccalhoun 6y ago
A lot of people think journalism has always strived to be impartial and that couldn't be farther from the truth. In the 19th and early 20th centuries newspapers were explicitly biased like Fox News and MSNBC.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  See also "yellow journalism". Particularly common in the early 1900s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
estaseuropano 6y ago
Why all this hate on journalists and newspapers? It is a demanding and very underpaid profession and the whole industry is squeezed. A few owners sadly own large parts of the media and push an agenda, but I really do not want to imagine a world where newspapers don't exist anymore. They are not perfect and its easy to criticise articles after the fact, but its incredibly difficult to pump out timely and relevant news. There often is no single truth but rather many perspectives and I don't think we can expect a journalist paid a barely livable wage and working long hours to keep up the highest quality standards every day all day. Please have some respect for the role this media plays, holding authority to account and getting by and large useful and correct information to the public. That doesn't mean you need to trust every written word, but comments like yours that newspapers are not/don't try most of the time to be honest and fair is simply not correct or fair.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  You appear to be attributing a position and an intention to the parent, and then attacking it. The attribution does not seem warranted.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  They don't hold authority to account unless it is the opposite party of the side they represent. As you said, a few owners control virtually all of corporate media. And those owners are not unbiased. And those owners and the people they hire in management have agendas. And that trickles all the way down to the newsroom floor, just like it does in any company. At any rate, journalism needs a business model revamp for the 21st century. Substack is part of the answer, but other things need to be tried too.
tobmlt 6y ago
I want to recommend “his girl Friday” here, as there is some news related manipulation of the public / politics in play, (back in 1940) but really it’s a second or third act to the real star (the “punched up” dialogue).
- jhbadger 6y ago
  Or the earlier "The Front Page" (1931) which is what "His Girl Friday" was a remake of (except by making one of the reporters a woman and the ex of the editor).
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Or the subsequent Switching Channels (1988), which is a remake of The Front Page/His Girl Friday!
Spooky23 6y ago
The 80s and 90s were peak “Journalism”, where they tried to make it like law school or something. Yellow journalism was the norm in the past. We lived through a unique and fairly amazing era.
- mc32 6y ago
  Wouldn’t you put 60s and 70s in there too? It was the heyday of national broadcasting before 24hr news took over with the combo of cnn + appetite for Gulf War I 24 hr coverage that cemented its place as news source?
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    It was, but the 60s and 70s were the age of old school newspapermen. They started dying out in the 80s.

mc32 6y ago

From the reporter fired by the NYT following an unflattering daily beast, albeit full of apparent fabrications, story[1]: “. ..But we’re still jackals. We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. At the highest levels, like Watergate, it’s about digging for the truth, no matter what corrupt government official it hurts. At the basest level, when even the crummiest scandal erupts, you have to repeat the accusation, even if you know it’s untrue or half-true, in order to explain the truth — no matter how much you may personally like the source you’re hurting.” [1] https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-part-one-introduction-57eb6a3e0d95 https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

tshaddox 6y ago

And instead conveyed radio as being able to instantly and simultaneously exert massive influence over the emotions of a huge number of people.