Punditry and attitude are more symptoms than causes of changes in American journalism. Think of them as signs of stress, foreshocks, as more powerful forces interact under the surface due to transformations in the technology of news distribution and, with … Read more
In recent years, punditry, opinion and so-called infotainment have permeated newscasts and newspapers to such a degree that it is now difficult for the average news consumer to distill the news from what they read and watch. Can responsible journalism … Read more
I would rephrase the question to be “Can democracy survive journalism as it has come to be practiced?” After all, accurate, trustworthy information, lots of it, is the bedrock of democracy. Propagandists who pose as journalists, and corporate bosses who … Read more
What if we are leaving the Age of Reason far behind? What if the basic cultural settings that have under-girded the best of American journalism—a scientific mindset and respect for the pursuit of fact-based truth—are giving way to an era … Read more
People often ask me what it is like backstage at “The McLaughlin Group” or Chris Matthew’s “Hardball” or Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” “Do you and your fellow panelists go out for a beer?,” they ask. “Do you pal around together?” … Read more
While we were getting down to the wire on the John Kerry Silver Star medal story at ABC News’s “Night-line,” the recent painful “60 Minutes’” debacle over the President’s war record story gave fresh meaning to an old rule, “Thou … Read more
Journalism is no more in a survival mode today than it was 52 years ago when Louis Lyons and my Nieman classmates worried about how a compliant and objective press was helping Joe McCarthy savage the body politic. Attitude? … Read more
Certainly journalism will survive. Indeed, it could even thrive as a result of today’s very real challenges. Journalists need neither fear nor denounce the proliferation of punditry and attitude. Rather, as the media landscape teems ever more vigorously with partisanship … Read more
Journalism often appears to thrill to the sense of being in crisis, but pressures on it now truly seem to fit the bill. On one side, it’s screwed down tighter than ever; on the other, the lid has blown off. Read more
FOIA for the FOIA logs. Not only do they contain clues to stories, but also reporters will discover fascinating/ entertaining requests. One CIA log, for example, showed a requester had asked for “radar and visual sightings of UFO’s.” The federal … Read more
