As you probably know, legendary journalist Mike Wallace died last weekend at the age of 93. In the clip below, Cenk and Ana of The Young Turks talk about Wallace and how today's media fails to emulate the hard-hitting style of interviewing he used during his illustrious career.
4 comments:
RIP.
Congrats for making it to 93! A long, full life is the most any of us could hope for.
A very, very fair, unafraid, hard-hitting journalist who never seem to let emotion or ideology dictate his professional side.
Today's media fail for a few reasons, an obvious one being the 24-hour media cycle and the need to be entertaining and competitive. But more than that, what it means to be a "journalist" has seemed to change across the board over the years.
Today it seems to be a platform to effect change. The way Wallace approached it, he seemed to just want to inform people and let them decide based on the best truth he could offer.
That's certainly past dead.
The other day I heard Bill O'Reilly refer to Mike Wallace as a liberal. I have also heard Mike described as being a moderate. Ultimately, it didn't matter because he asked tough questions regardless of the interviewee's political views. That's the way it should be.
I'm not sure, because I only caught O'Reilly talking about Wallace while Bernie Goldberg was there, but I think O'Reilly might be taking Bernie's word for it. Bernie worked with him for a long time and said that Wallace was a liberal man, but also that he never let that side of him come through in his reporting.
The way media has evolved today, I think most people expect that bias show through. Most people want to agree with their news.
Off topic here, but I was going to respond to your Hannity post with a Rage Comic I made, humorously illustrating the importance of agreement in news rather than information. But since it had an error in the save, I let it go. And since it's only Hannity, I didn't retry.
It was during the "Weekdays with Bernie" segment when O'Reilly made the comment about Wallace being a liberal. However, you could be right in that he's taking Bernie's word for it.
One of the few members of today's media who I think has managed to be bias-free in their reporting is Howard Kurtz. He has made it a point not to publicly reveal his political affiliation. One of my planned posts is related to Kurtz and his program "Reliable Sources".
As for Hannity, since I know you aren't a fan of his, I figured that's why you didn't comment.
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