![]() Journalism cannot serve its role as an institutional check on the powerful if it is driven by a need to maximize profit. For instance, in November, a Reuters report referred to the Trump impeachment hearings as “consequential, but dull,” while NBC lamented that they “lacked the pizazz necessary to capture public attention.” And earlier this month, CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell gushed over Trump’s distraction-laden State of the Union address, tweeting that he was “a master showman at his best.” This, of course, told us absolutely nothing about the content of his speech. The natural result of this approach is a world in which journalists celebrate meaningless moments while ignoring the substance of any given event or action. It’s an attitude that was shared by Les Moonves, the disgraced former CBS executive chairman and CEO, who called Trump’s run for president in 2016 a “circus” but also said, “It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS.” ![]() Zucker, it should be noted, came from the world of entertainment where he ran NBC Universal and personally lobbied to land The Apprentice at the network. The two of them share an understanding that news is about entertainment over education. It’s no wonder that Zucker hired Chris Cillizza, an embodiment of everything Postman warned against, to join him at CNN. In it, one paragraph about on-air panels devolving into shouting matches stands out as emblematic of the current media landscape. In April 2017, The New York Times Magazine published a lengthy profile of CNN President Jeff Zucker. Scandal quenched the thirst for entertainment much more effectively than policy coverage ever could, and in Donald Trump, American media outlets found themselves a politician light on policy but with a natural flair for the dramatic. The truth is that editorial decisions made by many of these same media companies were geared to appeal to our desire to be entertained more than our need to be informed. In the wake of the 2016 election, many media outlets seemed all too eager to blame the misinformed public on internet hoaxes emanating from Macedonia or Russian influence campaigns. ![]() It’s easy to find scapegoats for flawed journalism. The press will continue to operate as part of the entertainment business in the run-up to this year’s election. (For example, one passage in the book remarked on the unfortunate focus on style over substance in the 1984 presidential debates.) If he viewed the election of “a former Hollywood movie actor” to the presidency to be a logical outcome for a world in which we are primarily informed via entertainment-driven media, the election of a reality TV game show host surely wouldn't have come as too much of a shock to him these years later. Postman died in 2003, but his prophetic work lives on with a number of his annoyances becoming industry standards within political media. ![]()
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