Remember the good old days when reporters were reporters

[WCGreen]

and pundits were pundits and never the two did meet...

When the reporters on Meet the Press were actual reporters and not columnists who never left DC...

When investigations were conducted by the press on stuff more important than who was getting a blow job...

Ah, the good old days before cable news changed the dynamic.

[movonne]

1. I guess that was before the corporations took them ALL over...

[rock]

7. That's about the same (in effect) as I describe it:

When the media decided to drop news and present entertainment (deporably, I might add).

[rfranklin]

2. Anyone who was alive during the Vietnam War knows that those days never were...

There never were any bold journalists who challenged the powers that be in the old days. If they did they were gone faster than the blink of an eye. If you want to see a journalist who stuck it to the "establishment" look up I.F. Stone. e was cnstantly exposing the corruption of the politicians but, you know what, the average American never heard of him. I don't think that it's any worse than it was then...when people are entrenched in the social scene they do not really attack the people that they socialize with or "work" with..

[WCGreen]

3. Watergate...

And there were several huge scandals discovered and explained in the 1970's.

When everything started to implode was the way Reagan was able to manipulate the Iranians into not releasing the hostages and the country didn't care how it happened but were relieved it was over.

Then the way Reagan was viewed as a tough guy when he cut and ran right after the bombing of the Marines in Beirut.

Then the way they hyped Granada.

[Hey Jude]

5. Where were the "investigative journalists" when LBJ lied us into deeper involvement

in the quagmire that was Vietnam with his contrived Gulf of Tonkin incident? I remember them standing behind him babbling about the "domino theory"

Oh yeah *crickets* But again, probably just the ramblings of an old guy.

[rfranklin]

8. Watergate was an aberration and should not be used as an example of what usually happened...

Two young reporters who hadn't yet been "trained" went after the story and Ben Bradlee, somewhat amused, let them do their thing. But this was not the way things usually worked. And it took a long time for the story to actually build up a head of steam. If Nixon had played things differently, it probably never would have amounted to anything. But it certainly was not an exemplar of the way journalism usually worked in that era.

[Hey Jude]

4. Nope, unless you mean Perry White, Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen

But that was just the comics, movies and TV.

I think you're remembering something that never really existed.

But then I'm almost 65 so maybe my memory has dimmed a bit.

[lunatica]

6. Yes I do remember those days

And if it happened then it can happen again. I never lose faith. It's just been a bad few decades and it seems hopeless, but things are going to change very drastically within the next decade. Angry White Men are the minority now and they'll shrink even more.

[Bluefin Tuna]

9. I don't know if unbiased media ever existed in America.

The media may have been less biased in the past, but I don't know if this ideal of a media that is truly objective, neutral, and reports only the facts, was in existence in America for long, if it did. It seems that a lot of media is now unhealthily biased in favor of the left or unhealthily biased in favor of the right.

[lunatica]

11. Straight journalism is biased in favor of the facts

Nowadays any lie or opinion is considered as important as facts. There was a time when one took it for granted that what was being reported were facts. Someone would say what the White House released in a statement and that was it. News organizations like McNeil Lehrer would invite the actual Congresspeople and lawmakers to state their case pro or against issues. There would be very intelligent dialogues, not the yelling matches like Crossfire or the asinine shows that are obviously paid and bought for by billionaires with an agenda.

We didn't know nor could we figure out what the personal politics were of most of the anchors. What we did know was that they could be trusted to give us the facts. For opinions we read OpEds in the New Your Times which had an excellent reputation for telling the facts about stories. Reuters was another place to get world stories that could be trusted. Time magazine and The New Yorker were magazines you could read to get much more in-depth news about stories in the world. But all that was before billionaires could buy them all up and write whatever they wanted.

Now if we want facts we have to go online to various places which we've learned to trust through trial and error. In many ways we're much more responsible for finding the facts out there than we ever were.

[michreject]

10. I remember when reporters actually reported the news

instead of creating the news.

Seems so long ago.