Jim Lehrer was in Austin yesterday giving a lecture at the University of Texas.
Lehrer, who is the the anchor and executive editor of the PBS show “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer” was defending “traditional media” while portraying bloggers and other pundits as some form of lesser entity who can only survive on the hardworking coattails of the “journalists” in the “traditional media”.
‘In the beginning, there must be a news story’ before blogs and punditry can exist, ‘NewsHour’ anchor says.
Although traditional journalists face declining profits and increased competition from pundits, bloggers, comedians and different types of Internet media, Jim Lehrer said, the screams of panic coming from newsrooms aren’t completely merited.
Lehrer, 73, who has worn the hats of reporter, anchor, editor and novelist throughout his career, said the many choices for getting information that are available to modern Americans can’t replace the conventional reporters who gather and write news objectively.
Actually Jim, we can report before a news story exists. All we need is the news, which we can get from first hand accounts — think “An Army of Davids“, or something like that…
Besides, sometimes those “conventional reporters” don’t merely “report, gather, and write” the news “objectively”.
Sometimes they create the news just to fit their narrative. Which is hardly being objective at all (See: Dan Rather and “Fake but accurate” news).
Or like ABC News creating the news:
Manufacturing the news: ABC News hires actors to engage in homosexual PDA, provoke reaction:
Welcome to Serious Broadcast Journalism: If you can’t find the video you need to fit the P.C. left narrative, hire actors to make it happen.
Dinosaur network news motto: All the news that’s fit to stage.
There is just as much — actually, I take that back…there is a lot more — original gathering of facts, reporting, and analysis being performed by bloggers on a daily basis than there is in the entirety of “traditional media”.
Sorry, Jim — but you no longer own the means of printing and distributing what you consider to be “the news”.
It’s absurd (and a little sad) watching the buggy manufacturers bemoan the coming of the next automobile…
Yeah, where would we be with out our modern media?
Here’s a list of 101 journalist/authors, that did not serve the public interest well.
Some may think blogs aren’t significant, and don’t contribute worthwhile stories or news. They should put down the “dead tree” publication, and start surfing more.
Left by no2liberals on November 6th, 2007 at 9:40 pm