Koppel romanticizes an era gone by

[Klukie]

I read Mr. Koppel's OP in the Washington Post and one thing that struck me was how he believes that the media was so unbiased back in the day. Mr. Koppel attempts to paint the past as a time of unbiased news, while at the same time stating that the news organizations themselves dictated the content of said news. They dictated the content based on their beliefs of what the public needed to know. Maybe I am wrong here but doesn't ones beliefs ultimately lead to bias? Here is the quote from the article.....

"Much of the American public used to gather before the electronic hearth every evening, separate but together, while Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith offered relatively unbiased accounts of information that their respective news organizations believed the public needed to know."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202857_2.html

[Warpy]

1. It was still geared to be as unoffensive as possible to corporations

and stories about labor mainly featured corruption among union leaders.

Unbiased? Only through the glasses of Koppel's rosy nostalgia.

[Klukie]

2. I just think that the fact that those who owned the news got to choose...

what the public needed to know was in itself biased. Koppel was as owned back then as he is now.

[KharmaTrain]

3. 30 Minutes A Night Vs. 24/7

Back "in the day", all we had was the 30 minutes of Uncle Walter or Huntley/Brinkley each night. They had to squeeze a lot of information into that time so there was little time to editorialize. That changed starting with, of all people, Nightline, as Koppel spent 30 minutes night after night on the same story and began bringing in the "experts" and then talking heads to fill the time. Next came the cables that created the 24/7 cycle where a nation is now connected to a constant flow...quantity over quality.

Also, in Ted's day, the networks saw their news departments as loss leaders...a public trust. Today's networks are purely out for the bucks. News is now infotainment where ratings trump journalism.

[Winterblues]

4. However it wasn't really opinionated like we see today.

I do not consider MSNBC to really be a News Channel. It is mainly political news and sometimes gives real news when a major news event happens such as the trapped miners last month.. Usually though it is straight politics. I consider Keith and Rachel and Ed and Lawerence and Joe & Mika all to be opinion shows. There are also many on Fox News that are billed as Opinion shows, Glen Beck, O'Really, etc., however they carry it a whole lot further by inserting opinion into what they bill as regular news slots...CNN does this as well although not nearly so blatant. Most of the regular Network News shows are fairly opinion free and usually give just news although what they consider news we should know, is extremely shallow...The only real news show is on PBS. Almost never do they have fifteen minute segments on Lindsey Lohan going to jail or missing blonde girls in Pango Pango..It is getting to be the only way to find real news is to search it out. Political News though is carried heavily..

[rurallib]

5. Koppel romanticizes a time that never really existed

Just like the teabaggers who seem to believe that Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet were true reflections of American life.

[Klukie]

8. +1

My point exactly

[JackRiddler]

14. And he's rationalizing the earlier journalistic outrages for which he is among the responsible.

[SargeUNN]

6. Kopple didn't bother to get the truth out on the recent wars

He fell in line and was a good little follower. He should apologize for NOT doing his job then.

[liberal N proud]

7. Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, Reynolds and Smith were very careful

They were careful not to interject their personal beliefs into stories and they were focused on reporting facts. Not speculations or opinions. If they had opinions in the news, it was advertised at the beginning and ending of the piece.

Today, we have FAUX and CNN selling propaganda as fact, fiction as news. There is no integrity today and the so called news anchors have polluted the integrity of those that reported news in the past.

Don't forget when Koppel became a household name, the Iranian Hostage Crisis that took Carter out of office and ushered in Reagan.

[gratuitous]

9. Darn the luck

If only Ted Koppel had been in a position to do something about it! A position that wasn't paying him a big, fat salary to contribute to the loss of what he now claims to hold so dear.

[JitterbugPerfume]

10. it didn't exist!

It was never as Mr Koppel describes it . We look at the past through rose colored glasses.

[Johonny]

11. I agree

Yeah those Hearst owned news papers were totally unbiased. ;)

[JackRiddler]

12. Remember: AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE.

Koppel is complaining about the beast he midwifed.

[Klukie]

13. Yes he is!

[Rageneau]

15. During Clinton, Koppel energetically beat the big drum in the "Blue Dress" band.

He would clean up every morning, have a haircut and a manicure, then dive right down into the pig shit with Rush and all the others. The only thing that made Koppel different from them was that he insisted on pretending his witch hunt was legitimate news. Koppel takes himself 20 times more seriously than he actually is.