Dynamist Blog

Media Relics

Martin Wooster emails to ask what I think of Anne Applebaum's WaPost column on the CBS scandal. I think it's a great example of saying the obvious but unmentionable: Network news, in all its pomposity, is for old people.

Try as I may, I am unable to conjure up a single shred of nostalgia for the once-fabled network evening news programs. Walter Cronkite is a name to me, not a symbol of reassurance or stability. Edward R. Murrow is a historical figure. As for the hallowed idea of "the six o'clock news," it means nothing: In my adult life, I've never had time to watch the daily news at 6 or 6:30, at least not with any regularity. When I watch television at all, I switch without any particular loyalty from CNN to Fox to C-SPAN, depending on who is doing the talking, and I feel reasonably cynical about all of them.

I hasten to add that I am not writing this because I believe my viewing habits are interesting -- quite the contrary -- but because I suspect that they are typical, and growing more so all of the time. There is little to be said about the amorphous post-baby boomers -- anyone born after about 1960 or so -- but it's pretty clear that as a group we have no emotional attachment to ABC, NBC and CBS....

What became clear, as the story wound down to the inevitable apology on Monday night, was that Rather and his fellow network newsmen are stuck in a Vietnam/Watergate-era time warp. Most of us regard network anchors as faintly pompous talking heads, people who read other people's prose off teleprompters. But the anchors, rather extraordinarily, still regard themselves as the conscience of the nation. They aren't mere "journalists" who have to use authentic documents to prove their allegations but rather people whose fame and large paychecks and unchallenged power entitle them to some kind of automatic credibility, even if their documents are fake.

Read the whole thing.

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