20161122

NEWS

Tom Brokaw believed television had the ability to provide viewers with "the light and sound and unfiltered emotion of war, the birth of a child, the pain of a family, the joy of a winning run. It can be a window on the human experience, and that, too, is a function of journalism." At the time Tom also stressed, "As good as it is, network news will never be an adequate replacement for a first-rate daily newspaper, a weekly news magazine or a periodical specializing in a specific subject." 

Journalist Peter Couchman made the comment in 1989, "The (Australian) commercial stations have never been frightfully interested in talkback television, mainly, I suspect, because it’s never going to rate like a '60 Minutes'. I think there’s a real hole for it in television. But despite all the information programs and all the current affairs shows, there’s nobody really devoting 40 minutes to an hour to an issue, to a talking point." At the time, channel Nine claimed to have "unequal resources, continuing a total commitment to the best coverage on any given events and issues, setting the agenda, setting the standard - day by day, hour by hour."  

Tom maintained, "In this pluralistic society, network news provided common access to common information about common concerns … The evolution is already under way. The nightly network news programs are spending more time on fewer stories. There is a television set in almost every household in this country (United States). It is the most mass of the mass media. It is the common link for citizens of this global village, affected as they are by political division in Washington, economic decisions in Tokyo, military decisions in Moscow."

News producer Kerry Lonergan made the point, "It seems the easiest job in the world to sit down with a bunch of people in the studio and have a nice chat. People think that if they get in the middle of a really stimulating after-dinner conversation it would be great if you could televise it. But, in fact, if you did televise it, it would be awful because the conversations are all over the place, because even if they’re relaxed with stimulating debate, or conflict and all that sort of thing, it doesn’t work within the disciplines of television."

Tom insisted, "Try as they might, they cannot entirely escape the consequences of a health epidemic in central Africa, an explosion in Chernobyl or a revolution in Central America. How they adapt their lives to these developments depends very much on what they know of them. For the foreseeable future, their quickest access to that information is the network news program."

Bill Keveney of 'The Hartford Courant' made the observation in 1996, "In the 1976 movie, 'Network', screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky painted a withering portrait of television as a business gone mad with ratings, greed and the injection of entertainment into the hitherto sacrosanct world of news. Twenty years later, a number of the Chayefsky’s – who died in 1981 - satirical, over-the-top shots have turned into TV bull’s-eyes. Sybil the Soothsayer – his 'Network' fortuneteller who would have fit right in on today's Psychic Friends Network would have been proud.

"Using broad strokes, Chayefsky foresaw giant corporate owners with little experience in broadcasting, and a television industry more and more obsessed with the bottom line. However, he had an eye for the small details, too. For example, the 'skeletons-in-the-closet' segment of the 'Network' news hour couldn’t have been a better prototype for the tabloid styles of 'Hard Copy' and (the American edition of) 'A Current Affair'. Sure, Chayefsky also missed the mark. Even Chayefsky, whose cynicism had grown with his screen credits could not see far enough into the future to spot the multi-channel universe that, in an odd way, has become a welcoming host for his most bizarre predictions."

Harry Reasoner remarked, "Journalism is a part of anthropology. It's the current events of anthropology. That's what it should be. It should be a record of the cooking pots and artefacts so as we find them day to day we will leave them for the historians and anthropologists to analyze later." Tom added, "My profession has changed so rapidly and so dramatically in the last 10 years (since 1977) that we have spent most of our waking hours simply implementing the changes and adapting to the new technology, without adequately examining the consequences. Now is the time to take control of many of those changes."

"The changes are coming fast and furious," one broadcaster predicted, "but I think it's going to evolve so much more over the next 5 years (2006-2010). Organizations that have been set up to deliver news and information in a very specific manner for the last 50 years (since 1955) need to evolve and need to evolve quickly." Although the print media (books, magazines, newspapers) continued as "a powerful and much used source of information", electronic media (television, radio, computers, satellites) or the transmission of information by wire and air had the most impact in the delivery of news and information. The medium was the message, it was said.

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