A most fascinating thing today is the play of entertainment and news values, with media's highly competitive nature placing an accent on playing up the entertainment, the tabloid fear angle.Very reminiscent of the Pulitzer/Hearst yellow period when shock, reality, violence were key parts of newspaper wars. (Check out the "yellow kid.")
And yet the very search for entertainment can be the vehicle for "serious" journalism when it leads to a scraping of the barrel for fresh stories and angles to rivet an audience. Still, fresh is sometimes hard to find when everyone chases the same story.
Journalism, of course, rarely strives for "perspective." It is a tool of its times, a creature of passions, a mobilizer of audiences for ratings, prestige, power, and profit.
It is a bully box for princes, charlatans, fools, for querulous complaining, a prime purveyor of popular populism, of triumphant nationalism. "On Team" and "Off Team."
A terrifier of the people, a mobilizer of the nation. Shaper and pawn of the times.....
Often smoothing those with power, yet digging up the dirt. Painting out the truth in lovely shades of yellow.
Lots of changes, lots of changes. Ah, the journalism of nationalism runs amok in an age of globalization.
At still other times -- just excruciatingly dull.
"Truth in Media:" very little change except the technology.
"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun."
