The "nightly news" has become obsolete. They only offer about 5-8 minutes of events based news items, everything else is packaged "news magazine" reports. Same with the "morning news" programs.
With 30 minute "headline news" and "news channels" around the clock, there is little to compel viewers to watch "the nightly news" every night except habit.
Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw. None of them are trustworthy.
All of this is a tradition that sprang up in post-war (WWII) America.
Even local news (with the heavy focus on car crashes, warehouse fires, bar shootings, sports, and weather) offers little reporting on local events and politics.
Go online and read the day's events (or tune into college radio to hear a broadcast of "reading for the blind"). You miss the "soundbites" but you can get the FULL TRANSCRIPTS.
I like talk radio better than talking head tv shows (and I can hear it in my car as well as home); I even get different hosts around the clock on several stations.
Talk radio does not replace "the news" but it does replace talking head and "magazine format" shows. I get better laughs out of FR humor threads than I ever would out of a Tonight Show monologue or The Daily Show.
FR (and online news search engines) permit me to compare a news report (or headline) to see how editors tweak the story for different markets. There always is some key detail that they choose to omit.
At this point, I don't find any of the conventional media sources to be credible. I know that I am not alone.
Sad thing is that blogs (even FR) are temporary where as hardcopy newspapers and magazines as well as broadcast shows exist in archives forever. History will be missing a major account of what happened in these days.
I know that high school history books after the election of Bill Clinton will never give an appropriate account. What will they say of election 2000 or 2004?
Very well said. The cure for truth in history books is the death of political correctness. By bending over for disparate groups of complainers history books history books do not reflect what happened at a given point in time, but the perspective of a segmented group.
As to the MSM, it isn't over and they will still exist. As the MSM agenda driven elders retire or die off, the very nature of the ugly beast will change.