I'm Spoiled

Back when I was a teen, in the 1950's television news casters were trained in radio before they became anchors on TV. What that meant was they were selected for diction, voice, usually a baritone, and slow delivery. All of these traits were to facilitate the audience's ability to understand and to follow the conversation.

Baritones were mostly featured because hearing loss tends to be in the higher frequencies, such as with male tenors and women. Slow speech is necessary as well. Guys like Eric Sevaride, John Cameron Swazee and Walter Cronkite were stars in their time, not only for understandability but for objectivity.

All of that is gone. News anchors rattle on at warp speed, (Anderson Cooper) or talk strangely, (Greta Van Susteren) and others never bothered to learn broadcast quality speech. The were chosen for notoriety, (O.J. Simpson trial) and other social engineering purposes.

All you have to do is compare the rigid objectivity of the old school to the lack of trust in the above examples and many more.News and editorializing used to be clearly separated. Now they blend as the policies of the network slant the news which ever way they bend. Fox News and MSNBC are great examples of that, but even the conservative FOX features guests of opposing viewpoints. O'Reilly especially does this every show. MSNBC doesn't bother to even cover up their disdain for objectivity nor do they feature conservative foils to balance their shows.

Now days, liberals watch MSNBC applauding their intelligent insights and over at Fox, Conservatives lean forward in their seats smacking their lips with glee as the "Progressives" are shown to not be.

The news industry as a whole tends to be liberal almost to extreme.Newspapers are not immune. Here in our area we have the Spokesman-Review which features at least 95% left wing reporters and editors. Whether that is because of the professors in their educational progress or not, it is a large cause for business failure. When a news paper with left wing leanings spews out snarky ultra liberal positions to a moderate/conservative audience, well ... it doesn't take a magician to figure out why circulation is down. \\Advertising followers circulation which produces a large group of people who then are exposed to the advertisers products.

Unfortunately we have the cart pulling the horse. Business decisions are based on the supposition that more space is needed for ads leaving the reader with less content, which then loses readers which then loses advertisers. Why they don't learn? Because the bean counters rule instead of the news room. That applies also to television. Perhaps if there were any question as to why news in the paper or on nightly televison is failing and young people are going to their computers, maybe I have answered some of them.