4 ms·

Yeah I agree with both of you about the need for investigative journalism. I'm just saying that it's hard to be sad about the papers losing their classified ad

Yeah I agree with both of you about the need for investigative journalism. I'm just saying that it's hard to be sad about the papers losing their classified ads. They had a bunch of chances and they screwed them all up. I think in the long run this'll probably get sorted out. But you are both right that in the short run it sucks. Personally I'm loving what John Oliver is doing right now; it seems like every week he tackles some kind of genuinely important topic and has such a scathing review of it. They do such a good job that the institution's bad behavior is funny insofar as how misguided it actually is. It's also depressing that one of the better news sources available right now isn't CNN or some "legacy" media, but rather a guy who came up through The Daily Show. I think the reason that Last Week Tonight does so well is that they aren't beholden to anyhow. Most legacy media has somehow convinced itself that it needs access to politicians in order to report the news. That has led the reporters to be very deferential to people in power, which prevents them from asking tough questions or for evidence or proof of various assertions by those they quote. And because of that, they've watered down most of the value of their various brands. It's definitely sad, but I think that in some way these folks did it to themselves. When everyone is reporting "An anonymous government official said Snowden hurt us lots, and he is a bad guy" it's safe to say that they're not really doing their jobs.

walterbell 11y ago
> depressing that one of the better news sources available right now isn't CNN or some "legacy" ... the reason that Last Week Tonight does so well is that they aren't beholden to .. The show runs on HBO, owned by Time Warner, who owns CNN.
- msandford 11y ago
  I'm not really sure what the point you're trying to make is. That Last Week Tonight really is legacy media because it's owned by the same company that owns CNN? In that case, the Washington Post isn't legacy either, because it's owned by Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon, which is slowly destroying brick-and-mortar stores. I think what I meant was "Last Week Tonight isn't beholden to politicians" (but I didn't get that out quite right) which affords them the luxury of pointing out how stupid a lot of policies are. They don't need to call $politician up for information or a quote or whatever, so it doesn't matter if $politician doesn't like the show and won't play along. I think the show will continue for quite a while due to excellent ratings, and those ratings are largely because they're doing the actual work that reporters are supposed to do. I think a lot of legacy newspeople confused what you did in order to do your job with the job itself. In other words, that the ends were the results they were after (having an article, getting on TV, etc) rather than having something important enough that there was no alternative but to write an article or what have you. Getting published was the goal, not having something worth publishing.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    One theory for the editorial independence of LWT on HBO is the absence of advertisers who could pull their advertising in response to content. CNN could create an LWT competitor without political guests, but they would remain beholden to CNN advertisers.
    - msandford 11y ago
      An excellent point actually. Similar to the funding model of ordinary people buying papers; there's no one single big sponsor that can get a story shut down.
jameshart 11y ago
Last Week tonight is an absolute gem of television, but do note that most of John Oliver's in-depth segments are illustrated by snippets of actual mainstream TV network news coverage of the stories he's talking about.

walterbell 11y ago

> depressing that one of the better news sources available right now isn't CNN or some "legacy" ... the reason that Last Week Tonight does so well is that they aren't beholden to .. The show runs on HBO, owned by Time Warner, who owns CNN.

msandford 11y ago
I'm not really sure what the point you're trying to make is. That Last Week Tonight really is legacy media because it's owned by the same company that owns CNN? In that case, the Washington Post isn't legacy either, because it's owned by Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon, which is slowly destroying brick-and-mortar stores. I think what I meant was "Last Week Tonight isn't beholden to politicians" (but I didn't get that out quite right) which affords them the luxury of pointing out how stupid a lot of policies are. They don't need to call $politician up for information or a quote or whatever, so it doesn't matter if $politician doesn't like the show and won't play along. I think the show will continue for quite a while due to excellent ratings, and those ratings are largely because they're doing the actual work that reporters are supposed to do. I think a lot of legacy newspeople confused what you did in order to do your job with the job itself. In other words, that the ends were the results they were after (having an article, getting on TV, etc) rather than having something important enough that there was no alternative but to write an article or what have you. Getting published was the goal, not having something worth publishing.
- walterbell 11y ago
  One theory for the editorial independence of LWT on HBO is the absence of advertisers who could pull their advertising in response to content. CNN could create an LWT competitor without political guests, but they would remain beholden to CNN advertisers.
  - msandford 11y ago
    An excellent point actually. Similar to the funding model of ordinary people buying papers; there's no one single big sponsor that can get a story shut down.

jameshart 11y ago

Last Week tonight is an absolute gem of television, but do note that most of John Oliver's in-depth segments are illustrated by snippets of actual mainstream TV network news coverage of the stories he's talking about.