As our society evolves, so do the means we keep ourselves informed.
A thousand years ago, traveling merchants, storytellers and ‘going to the fair’ would be the main ways non-elites (as in, us regular citizens) got information about what was happening in the world. A hundred years ago, we would likely read the newspapers – or have someone who read them tell us about all the interesting things that were going on. Then, the radio, TV….well, you know the rest.
The large and established newspapers, news-magazines, TV-news and to a degree, radio, make up our ‘mainstream media’ (MSM). The majority of the people in our society get all of their news through this means – hence the term, ‘mainstream’.
During the early part of the 20th, the MSM had earned for itself a reputation of impartiality and fierce independance. Journalists were proud to ‘hunt down’ the truth, the whole truth – and report nothing but the truth. And not just report it – report it in as factual a way as possible.
Recently, my father-in-law was looking up some news story from the 1st half of the 20th century – so he went down to the ‘National Archives’ and started looking through the dailies. He was struck at how very differently the ‘news’ had been reported. No fluffy wording. No idiotic interviews with a neighbour who had not seen anything, but happened to be ‘around’ when the reporter needed an ‘eyewitness’. No guesses about what ‘society’ had done to ’cause’ such a tragedy. Just, well, facts. A bit stark, to be sure, but informative…
So, what happened?
Dan Rather has some insights that I think are very interesting:
By the way, Mr. Rather thinks that ‘bloggers’ are the next wave in news-communication – and a healthy antidote to the current malaise of the MSM. Though he does not have a blog himself, in another interview, he said that if he were offered an opportunity to join a group of several bloggers, he just might consider making it the place from which to fight this battle!
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