An undergrad asked me something last week and I started by saying the media environment was very different back in the nineties and he interrupted to say “yeah, everyone was watching Walter Cronkite right?”
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
I’m a 1980 Baby X too! I miss how “boring” and safe the 90s was. I mean the worst part was the onset of the Gulf war, then everything went downhill from then on.
Did you mention how Ronald Reagan removed the requirement for news agencies to report the news in a fair and balanced way. RR created the partisan, polarized MSM of today.
The justification for the regulation of free speech, which the Fairness Doctrine represented, was the scarcity of wavelengths provided by the broadcast spectrum. Cable (and later internet) removed this basis. A replacement is needed but would need a different basis.
The Fairness Doctrine required both sides of an argument to be presented, so in theory it could be gamed that climate deniers legally had to have equal air time with climate scientists.
The Doctrine is well meaning, but we'd need to modernize the hell out of it if we ever brought it back.
That was politically the conclusion that was drawn. It was already being weaponized for politics, everybody hated it, from politicians to journos to viewers. To modernize it, it would've basically needed to have been rebuilt from the ground up, or gotten rid of. 1/
Truth doesn't need balance. The golden mean fallacy is a thing. Rare is the time "both sides," have valid points — that too is a product of the modern media environment and (well-intentioned, but again, see above) academic postmodernism.
I agree with everything you've said, but I also think that the current state of the media is doing a massive disservice to the American people as well; let people eat anything and they'll choose junk food. I don't know a solution, but I know it's causing problems.
Paddy Chayefski wrote Network as a cautionary tale but they started using it as a business model. It all started after Cronkite retired and Reagan got rid of the fairness doctrine.
Well, he got the decade wrong but at least he knew about Cronkite. That's a start! Now if they can just be sure to remember how Congress spends the taxpayers' money.
Dan Rather was the hot shot in the 1990s as I remember. He's the one who I watched during Desert Storm and the Clinton elections. Yeah, okay, I was a weird kid, watched all that stuff home by myself.
But dang that voice of reason and not hollow opinion is what we need!
You're referring to the media environment that gave Newt Gingrich et al all the oxygen he needed to carry out his Contract on America, drag Whitewater on for years, and disparage Al Gore as boring?
we’ve now moved beyond TV 📺 and the political theatre of debates 🔁 it’s now click-bait and battling MISINFORMATION ➕ outright LIES on the same turf as which spreads them 🙏🏾 TRUTH & HISTORIC PRINCIPLES have to be as accessible ➕ and contrasting the toxicity which has yielded the current circumstances
I pin the decline of the media to 3 pivotal moments:
1-1984, Reagan tells press multiple “true life stories” of his that were actually plots to his films. No reporter reports it amidst questions about his age.
2-OJ
3-Lewinsky
By the time you get to the Brooks Bros riot the Press fails utterly.
Walter retired March 1981 a week before my first son was born. I spent many a National crisis with a cup of tea and Walter. Then I discovered Peter Jennings, another reporter you could count on. I would have loved to hear his opinion on Trump & Canada.
Born in ’62 and a huge Cronkite fan because of his reporting on the space program. I wrote him a fan letter about that and he wrote back! More important, while I was too young to grasp some details, I remember his truthful reporting on the Tet offensive.
Not just Cronkite, but others who despite having personal political views (as we all do) were nevertheless trusted to be telling the truth. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine led to countless liars allowed to pollute the public airwaves with lies, conspiracy theories, racism, misogyny, etc.
I was born during the Carter Admin, but ... was this person substantially wrong? Sure, they weren't Cronkite/Murrow, but Rather/Brokaw/Jennings/McNeil-Lehrer commanded a central position in daily news more similar to 1950s/60s than news ecosystem now.
Grew up in small town TX. In the 1960s, we had WFAA/ABC, WBAP/NBC, KRLD/CBS, and an Indy station KTVT. No cable. Huntley & Brinkley, Walter Cronkite. Dan Rather. No talking heads. No fake news. I don’t recall worrying if it was true. Things have really changed, and not for the better.
Less than fifteen years from the fall of Saigon to 1990 he was pretty close how would you do naming the peak news personality of the the 1930s but NOT 1945
Jerry Springer was a decent man who genuinely cared about both his guests and his audience, even as he monetized the hell out of the spectacle. Who like that owns a platform on the internet today?
A common saying I have in class is: “Back in the day, there was thing called a ______” (insert TV, news program, VHS, TV, overhead projector…) and then I will define it: “The ______ is (defined as) a …”
Yep - TRUE Journalism for ya.
They've done that BS to me a few times as well.
For some reason the Journalist "FEELS" it won't have enough POP for their personal Readers so they put THEIR WORDS in your mouth!
Even I had to look up when Walter Cronkite was CBS anchor (1962-1981). We need better history teaching. I want more like Rachel Maddow’s Ultra: some Americans wanted the U.S. to take Hitler’s side in WW II. We have home-grown racist fascism right here in the old US of A.
Walter Kronkite rotting in his grave is still better than any "news" caster today. The American Corporate Media was the First Surrender of this Country.
Say all you want about Cronkite. But we trusted him because he did his best to get at the most important current events of the day. Was it perfect, no. But he was trustworthy. And you knew you would get the "top of the fold" important news every time.
Edward R. Murrow, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. In LA it was George Putnam. (He always seemed angry in his delivery…but I was 10.)
I saw Walter Cronkite speak, late 90s at the Waldorf. One person at a table was introduced, yep, the orange man that is trying to tear down everything WC stood for. The irony.
I was the poorest guy in the room. Still a woman tried to slip her card in the sewn closed pocket of my rented tux.
I mean, he's *kind of* right. Back in the 90s most of us got our news from the evening network programming, 5pm and 11pm. CNN started getting eyes during the Gulf War, but not everybody had cable.
Not that your interlocutor would know Peter Jennings.
Full disclosure: I was born in '84, so my memories of 90s news is mostly limited to me begging my parents to change the channel. I may be part of the problem.
Full disclosure: I was born in 1966. I still remember watching 16mm footage of the Vietnam war on a black and white TV with an antenna made out of a coat hanger.
I'd dig a hole and lie in it but my back won't cooperate
CNN Headline news was on 24-7 starting in the early 90’s, if I recall. It was always playing in the entrance to my college dining hall. There was a spot to sit and watch the news while you ate.
2003 was when a Republican-controlled FCC allowed media cross-ownership within market areas, so now we have single conservative owners of radio, TV, cable channels and newspapers in multiple markets. So they can push the stories, and angles, they want on every channel.
Comments
The Doctrine is well meaning, but we'd need to modernize the hell out of it if we ever brought it back.
People really don't understand that news never was about "fair and balanced," that was Fox. News is "fair and accurate."
"Fair," in the sense that it doesn't make baseless accusations. /2
Truth doesn't need balance. The golden mean fallacy is a thing. Rare is the time "both sides," have valid points — that too is a product of the modern media environment and (well-intentioned, but again, see above) academic postmodernism.
But dang that voice of reason and not hollow opinion is what we need!
The kid was right, even if his dates were wrong.
I miss Uncle Walter.
Some evangelical, or even worse - both!
1-1984, Reagan tells press multiple “true life stories” of his that were actually plots to his films. No reporter reports it amidst questions about his age.
2-OJ
3-Lewinsky
By the time you get to the Brooks Bros riot the Press fails utterly.
I miss those days?
Um, I actually do remember watching Walter Cronkite when I was a wee small child...
1st guy: It was like Bill Clinton.
2nd guy: Bill Clinton was in, like, 2000, bro.
1st guy: No, not Bill Clinton. Who’s the guy who’s president now?
Maybe he associated Bush with 9/11 or with his own birth year and figured that would mean his predecessor was in office around 2000.
Gave you time to process information.
Damn, I'm old...
Incidentally, a class on Prof. Tom Lehrer's lyrics would be immensely educational even today.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCQMo1CbI1PHFWnZl-76NbJw?si=68AWWJT4Z7WinoVc
So don't wait up for me
But while you swelter
Down there in your shelter
You can see me
On your TV
(And it makes me feel old 🤣
Jerry!
Jerry!!
JERRY!!!
They've done that BS to me a few times as well.
For some reason the Journalist "FEELS" it won't have enough POP for their personal Readers so they put THEIR WORDS in your mouth!
SHARE: Please do not just 'like' this post. Let's get the word out and ORGANIZE
he wasn't taking a history course in media.
I respected the hell out of Cronkite and also Huntley and Brinkley.
I was the poorest guy in the room. Still a woman tried to slip her card in the sewn closed pocket of my rented tux.
Not that your interlocutor would know Peter Jennings.
Frontline was/is also GOAT.
I'd dig a hole and lie in it but my back won't cooperate
The information age started in the 90s, but not for everybody.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGtjPUYOUJD/?igsh=MWR2NjFyNGhhb2Q1bg==
Before that though, radio was ubiquitous, and most people had it on in the car and at home. Radio news was almost always available.