Posted on 07/12/2019 9:37:20 PM PDT by ransomnote
Walter Cronkite unnerved a nation 56 years ago, by taking off his glasses.
The video has been seen by countless millions over the decades: Cronkite announcing on live television in 1963 the death of President Kennedy. He stops for a moment, removes his glasses, composes himself and moves on. That gesture rattled Americans because they expected journalists to convey a calm sense of authority, a reassuring stoicism in the face of Cold War standoffs, civil unrest and even the assassination of a president.
Things have changed. Emotion now blankets the media landscape like an infant’s crib at bedtime. Google “Shepard Smith emotional,” and up come nearly 3 million results, many of them focused on the Fox anchor’s recent visceral response to immigrant suffering. A search of “Rachel Maddow crying” delivers more than 1 million offerings, many for the MSNBC host’s reaction to border detentions and the Mueller report. “Brooke Baldwin tears” uncovers nearly 2 million entries for the CNN reporter’s reaction to a variety of news events.
They are not alone. Contemporary culture trusts feelings over facts, rewards heated emotion — tears or anger — and rejects medium cool. The effect on journalism is unmistakable. And a lot of the blame can be placed on those all-too-common twin devils: television and the internet.
From the earliest days of television, journalists understood the power of an image to overwhelm objectivity. That’s why Cronkite and others worked hard to present the news without emotional cues: no raised eyebrows, head-shaking, or wide-eyed incredulity. They presented the news simply, expecting this would counteract that gut-level response all humans have to striking images.
Thank you for sharing that! I was 5 years old and need to educate myself on that era. Our schools NEVER touched it and I remain, sadly, ignorant on so much of it!
EXACTLY! I appreciate Fox News for commentary and, largely, their past efforts... But as I told my former and good acquaintance Mike Gallagher “It does NOT need to be ‘Fair & Balanced’ - it only need be true and accurate!”. (He didn’t appreciate that opine since he was, then, an active commentator.
Interesting! I was a kid during the era and the evidence of bias, to me, is scant. Good Freepers like you are now educating me. I was a journalism/mass media major circa 1985 with accolades, taught by liberal educators who were (unlike today) totally objective and had integrity. At age 55, I’m still catching up on any media history pre-Rush Limbaugh 90’s.
If they were left-wingers, you were already getting the brainwashing (perhaps more subtle, but still there). I’m a decade behind you in age and got the brainwashing in public school and stood up to it about that same time 3 1/2 decades ago.
When Cronkite was powerful enough to deliberately sabotage our mission in Vietnam based on LIES (we were not losing, we were winning), it showed how truly dangerous these so-called “journalists” were. Even before Cronkite, you had Edward R. Murrow, and he sought to destroy Sen. Joe McCarthy and his exposure of Soviet and pro-Soviet sympathizer infiltration into our government and institutions.
That they are respected in any way is sickening. The damage they did is incalculable.
Heck, forget Cronkite, or Murrow, or even Duranty. This whole leftist rot in “objective” news sources (the quotes are meant to indicate sarcasm) was there since Walter Lippmann even formed Objective News Media, and such was by design. Just read up ProgressingAmerica, and you’ll see what I mean by that.
And I’m just going by America alone. If I were to go even farther back, I’d even argue that that whole mess started with the Enlightenment via Voltaire and his cronies when they took over the French Academy in their agenda against Christianity.
You really can trace it all back to the snake in the Garden of Eden. It’s God (good) vs. evil.
Well, yeah, that too.
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