In today’s day and age, news and reporting has shifted from unbiased reports of currently important events to accounts of anything and everything deemed “newsworthy.” In my opinion, this isn’t anybody’s fault specifically, but more-so the effects of the information age. What we have is just a case of an over-abundance of information combined with a starving society needing to consume everything and anything they can wrap their minds around.
For those of you aching for the real reporting to come back; the days of tyrants that once ruled the airwaves not impressed by money, but by the ability to spread their knowledge of current events unbiased and unscripted, you might be happy to know that we could see a re-emergence of sorts in the very near future.
Reading this weeks assigned articles put me in a nostalgic mood. I was never alive to really benefit from these old-school reporting methods, nor do I really understand fully how we strayed.so far from them, but I went on an adventure through the internet to educate myself more on these methods and their difference from news today. YouTube, being a wealth of media as it is, provided useful old VHS-rips of old broadcasts of news.
I watched about twenty old broadcasts, ranging from the 1940s to about 1979. One thing I noticed afterwards, was that their methods, their tried-and-true presentation of facts, are still being used today. The only difference, is that it isn’t on a national broadcast level. While television continues to be an important device to receive news today, sites like YouTube and similar vlog sites are a host to many young minds wanting nothing more than to give you the news. Many of these young minds are being picked up by big organizations, too! As more and more flood the market, we could see somewhat of a Cronkite rebirth not only in reporting, but potentially journalism as well.
I know what you’re thinking. Brandon, once these kids hit the big times, they’ll eventually sell out, or become apart of the corrupt news machine. Well, thanks to the internet, the knowledge of this is a lot more accessible to people entering the industry now.
It’s a head start of sorts.