THINQon : Walter Cronkite, and Journalism, is dead

TV Room General Walter Cronkite, and Journalism, is dead

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Chris Utterman

Walter Cronkite, and Journalism, is dead

Latest Post: July 19, 2009 at 10:14 PM

28 followers

Walter Cronkite, the voice of TV News, has died a few minutes ago. He was 92 years old.

I didn't know Walter Cronkite besides from documentaries, and definitely didn't experience the strong relationship people had with him. A personal relationship of an audience to their news bearer. I would be interested in hearing people's thoughts about him and relationship to him.
I wanted though to ask: has journalism as we imagine it disappeared with him? What is left of journalism today?

News today has no corroboration, everybody repeating whatever anybody else says as if it is true. Do we have any relation to truth anymore? A report is accepted as true unless there are enough voices countering it. This goes in part together with our concept of truth as Truth by popularity and how Wikipedia works. But it goes deeper than that.
I'm not exactly complaining. There are many ways in which moving the news to the people rather than a monarch is extremely good. In fact it gives people a tremendous power for which I'm all for. But I think the question which comes to mind is how to read the voice of the crowd. With all the power the single person gets, they lose a lot in investigative reporting which is disappearing before our very eyes. Why investigate when you can simply sling the mud and see whether it will stick.

Walter Cronkite was the news. Whatever he said was fact, and whatever he didn't say was fiction. It made the world easier.
People mention two main events in his reporting career. The murder of Kennedy, where he notified the nation about it, and an op-ed, after returning from Vietnam, that America will lose the Vietnam war. What about op-ed's by THE news bearer? (He was there so it was also in a way investigative reporting. But we are now all investigators, sitting in our basements, connected to the net.)

I'm not sure of the future of reporting. There are many bad things in the direction we are going, and a lot of extremely good things. What can we do to give more weight to the good parts? What can we do to salvage some important disappearing elements?

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

John Stevenson	in "Dear CNN, I hate you."	(The Newsroom)
Leah Staple	in "Okay, so I like Gwyneth Paltrow"	(The Living Room)

Reply to:

John Stevenson

July 19, 2009 at 10:14 PM

21 followers

Hi Chris,
A small comment regarding the question of corroboration. It is true that at the time they verified the news more, but at the end either an item was reported or not. If it was, then it was believed (see Landing on the Moon ) if it wasn't reported it was false. From this grew many conspiracy theories.
Today we have everything reported, both true and false. This slew of information is a different way of hiding what is important from the people. I heard someone, I don't remember whom, say how in dictatorship they control the news by limiting it, while in the US it's by drowning you in nonsense (celebrity gossip and so on). Many outrageous events are being reported only they are not caught by mainstream media which still has its own agenda.

But there is another issue. It used to be that people , like deep throat, could remain reasonably hidden. Today it is much easier to find the mole. Everything is electronic, and unless the mole is very savvy they will be caught. This is a big change from investigative journalism. Without going to a serious journalist as a middleman, chances are you will be found out. As investigative journalists are disappearing, so are anonymous moles in danger of disappearing.
There will be more and more snitches lets call them, and they might create some online accounts (email/wikipedia/thinqon) and try to work from a library, but many more will be caught.
On the other hand, if you do know what you are doing, it might be easier today to remain anonymous?