Finally, I get to Part 2, the “Destroyers of the Truth.” Turn your clock back to the 1970’s, the twilight of the Golden Age of news. Events starting in the early 1960’s like the Cold War between the USA and Soviet Union, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations, then Watergate shook the news business to the bone.
Instead of a fifteen-minute national news broadcast, they expanded to 30 minutes with additional “news” shows like 20/20 or Sixty minutes among others added to the line-up. This and a demand for real time coverage of events like the Kennedy assassination in 1963, where network coverage pre-empted regular programming, changed the face of media forever.
Suddenly national and local news became a big deal which led to an explosion of media innovations including the live broadcast of events, field reporting, live inter-active reporting between news anchors and field reporters, and a digital revolution in the collection, processing and distribution of news.
The second major shift taking place simultaneously was the wild and wacky decade of the 1960’s, as the post-World War II baby boomers became the dominant force. Suddenly the youth of our nation faced crisis after crisis as they filled secondary and college educational institutions with their thirst for a new world.
The Baby Boomers, born in the shadow and deadly radioactive fallout of the only two atomic explosions ever used in war, which were dropped on Japan and ended World War II. It would take a book to describe the impact the 1960’s had on this new generation and so far, none have done it justice.
“Within the span of a single decade the greatest revolution in world history took place…”
Within the span of a single decade the greatest revolution in world history took place as the Boomers faced civil rights bloodshed, demands for academic freedom, the threat of a Cold War, the added threat of biologic or chemical warfare, death in Viet Nam, death on college campus’s protesting the war, political assassinations, bloody peace protests, and so much more.
The entertainment industry also reached their Golden Age as Broadway, movies, and television all exploded before they would settle into bitter rivals in the battle for the hearts, souls and pocketbooks of the people. How appropriate the end of the decade would result in Woodstock, a rock festival and anti-war protest drawing over 400,000 concert-goers to a muddy field in the other New York, meaning upstate from NYC.
“I call it the Second American Revolution.”
This amazing decade is what I call the Second American Revolution. What emerged at the end of the decade showed little, if any, resemblance to what began the decade. There was not an institution, idea, principle, or political policy that was not tested, tried and trampled over.
At this point I will offer you multiple choices of what caused such a venerable and respected institution like the news media to pretty much self-destruct in the ensuing decades until today. Decide for yourself which were most responsible as the “Destroyers of the Truth” here in the American. News media.
Causes of the Collapse of the News Media
Cable News? Competition
Internet Technology
Changes in news media valuation from viewers to profits
Profit-driven companies bought news interests as investment
Astonishing increase in political spending for media
Courts rejecting campaign finance laws
Failure of government to regulate Internet
Proliferation of media advertising revenue
Blurring of the distinction between news and editorials
Apathy of a disenfranchised population
Reporters becoming advocates of causes and politics
A general public seemingly disinterested in the truth
Conflicts of interest between media and politics
No enforcement of News Media Code of Ethics
Lack of media accountability for sources and stories
Government abuse of classifying information
To sum it all up, greed, a lust for power, and exorbitant advertising revenue from politics and the private sector fueled the demise of the news media. Once again, the pendulum has reversed itself and the credibility and believability of the news media by the public has gone off the cliff.
What was once intense competition between news groups has morphed into an insidious and ruthless effort to not only dismember and destroy those of opposing views, but to trample on the free rights of everyone but yourself. Respect for our Constitutional rights to individual freedom, opportunity and free speech are spit upon by ego-centered, celebrity-driven news media.
“A new, more powerful special interest has cast a long dark shadow over our world.”
A new, more powerful special interest has cast a long dark shadow over our world, the digital answer to control. Dominated by greed and the lust for power and fueled by an explosion of ad revenues from even more special interests, the news media of today, have no code of ethics.
When it comes to the Internet news providers and news aggregators, stories being pursued are no longer of broad interest but serve their own agenda. Fake news is highly successful because, quite frankly, the reader is lost in the abyss of power and control. People have willingly become pawns, because they have no backbone for the truth.
The news media embraces polarization, character assassination, and political agendas which are a violation of the Journalism Code of Ethics. They are caught up in a tangle of special interests whose interest may be the enslavement of the general public to technology. We are data-driven fools whose every thought, action, purchase, interest, and personal health and wealth are already under the microscope of Big Brother.
The Internet changed the dynamics. The loss of integrity, absence of fairness, and failure of news groups to take responsibility for their stories or actions has undermined any hope for credibility in the news media.
“Social media news organizations and so-called news aggregators for the Internet services have become the new overlords of the news media…”
Social media news organizations and so-called news aggregators for the Internet services have become the new overlords of the news media, and the new censors for determining news media content.
I suspect somewhere along the line the institutions of higher learning who once defended the freedom and fairness of the news media decided corporate underwriting of the academic endowment funds was more important than telling the truth. Or, perhaps they were just taking care of their university graduates in the private, “capitalism” sector.
In summary – the truth has been checkmated, the game is over.
