Charlie..."being a reporter use to be a calling not a career." That line in itself describes the erosion of our great country because once every American treated his job like calling not a transaction. We were better then. Great great show and even better writing!
shareIt's a lie. Penn and Teller had an episode on their show about something similar where a bunch of people wanted to go back to the Leave It To Beaver era. The conclusion was that it never existed.
Yellow journalism, such as sensationalism and lack of real news has existed for centuries (albeit the term was only coined near the end of the 19th). The only real difference is that the internet and 57 channels has given us more choice and magnified a problem that's always existed.
No, it's not a lie.
There is scientific evidence that shows middle aged males experience unprovoked nostalgia. That explains why aging baby boomers turn reactionary and believe in an autobiography that isn't true. That's a completely different animal though.
Traits such as professionalism, integrity and honor are only mythical to those who do not possess them. They are timeless. They have existed at least since the dawn of mankind, and will continue to exist, at least in principle, long after the last human life is extinguished.
I say don't knock it til you've tried it.
My personal favorite "greatest line ever" was when Jim said to Hallie "I beam signals into outer space every night" or something to that effect. I can relate to that because I've had my own love affair with broadcasting for most of my life. Although I know the underlying scientific principles in great detail, it's still magical to me.
I've had many varied visceral thrills during my life, but none as sublime as the thrill that I used to get when I commanded hundreds of thousands of watts of energy to spray out of an antenna atop one of the most famous buildings in the world, and then saw and heard the bars and tone that I had just sent to it coming back to me...and seven million other people whether they realized it or not.
Again, don't knock it til you've tried it.
Chances are that you never will because I was a member of an elite fraternity, one with a very limited number of members. Back in my day the big step down was to cable, the club that anyone could get into, with the prestige and paychecks to match. Cable access channels were the warm-up act for the deeply devalued currency of words that people read today on the Internet in the mistaken belief that it's journalism. It's not, and never was. At least back then we admitted it.
I don't know when it happened, but at some point in time the masses forgot that the number of people of exceptional character, the "most trusted" class, is very small indeed; and that the infinite monkey theorem has not come true. The people who always use the word "digital" incorrectly produce ever-increasing quantities of words, but not one single new Shakespeare has emerged.
Snark is the idiot's version of wit and we're being polluted by it. --Will
Well said, Speed Daemon. Yes, there may always be people with integrity and a sense of professionalism but the difference is that during the "Leave It to Beaver" era, these characteristics were revered rather than mocked (even though there was plenty of injustice to go around). To borrow a phrase - the fault is in ourselves, or more to the point, the culture and values we have decided to elevate. Will WAS right.
shareThank you for your kind response, lorene-lavora. I personally can't speak to the "Leave It to Beaver" era (1957-1963), which began before my birth and ended when I was a toddler. I can only speak of those people of great integrity whom I had the great honor of working with as a TV broadcaster (and in other industries) as recently as today.
I do not believe that people of honor and integrity are any less revered today than 50+ years ago. What I believe in my observation is that today such people shouted down by larger numbers of louder voices, the rock-throwers and attention whores if you will. I lament that the public at large has chosen to follow those who shout loudest, rather than those who make more sense.
Perhaps this trend has been 50+ years in the making. It just seems to me like the rush to utter stupidity has only happened in the last decade or so. It wasn't that long ago when the Internet was where the finest minds on earth hung out, and when Tom Brokaw was every bit as influential as Murrow and Cronkite. Maybe I'm biased because I still look at the world through my "broadcaster goggles", I don't know.
Well, the shout down factor is certainly a major contributor. Sadly, as someone who has been involved in media and IT, it pains me to sound like a geezer when I say that my beloved Internet has provided a platform for anonymous rage and anti-intellectualism, but there you have it. I think that shouting and the crowd worship of it is part of what I'm referring to when I say our culture has changed. There is a lack of civility that has been embraced on the whole. Yes, we honor some whose deeds are heroic, exceptional, etc. but more often, there is a level of cynicism and contempt for rational thought and civil discourse that seems to define us now. It's pretty sad. Funny you mention fine minds on the Internet. In my own professional sphere, I am wrestling with what has become of technology - something I have loved and had faith in for a long time. I am constantly reminded of something someone said many years ago that stuck with me about technology having "turned up the gain" and us not knowing how much we're capable of absorbing. I guess we're an ongoing experiment! And as I write this I'm reminded of "A Face In the Crowd" - maybe you're right about this not being new??
shareWhen it comes to the Internet, anyone born since 1980 is old enough to have witnessed the shift of the Internet from being a sophisticated tool of the best and brightest, to a mass transit system of the lowest common denominator of human thought. No "geezer factor" necessary to see that!
Technology is neither good nor evil. It's only a means to an end, and it's up to the person using it what that end is. Always has been, always will be. The same fair that kept primeval humans warm and cooked their food can also be used to inflict horrible pain. That's one truth that's a lot older than 50 years!
When Guy Kawasaki ignited the first major "Internet" flame war by means of his EvangeList, the Internet was yet to be publicly accessible, and wouldn't be until after he had left Apple! The EvangeList was distributed by fax machine, a technology that predates the telephone! The EvangeListas certainly weren't of the Internet, but certainly were a prototype of what would come later.
Technology may be an enabler, but without the human will and the conscious decision, none of this would happen spontaneously. Rupert Murdoch had to make the willful decision to create a political activism channel and to dishonestly call it "news". Later on, when Murdoch's "Fox News" channel and the RNC conspired to launch an AstroTurf movement that they named after the Boston Tea Party, there were people who made the willful decision do do that, and to create a Big Lie about it.
(That's one thing that "The Newsroom" got wrong: that the so-called "tea Party" was an outsider that took over the RNC. In reality it was a RNC project from the start.)
There have always been antisocial people. But in the past the majority has refused to tolerate such behavior, and has made it an unacceptable outlier from the norm. So what is making these recent outbursts of incivility different? Well for one, they both have massive organizational and financial support. Another is that someone already had control of the message.
Another thing, perhaps the most alarming one, is that in both cases, people are pretending like there's a crisis that demands their attention, but in fact they are making the crisis themselves!
In historical cases of social breakdown and massive shifts toward incivility, there has been some real hardship that caused people to do what would be unthinkable in normal times. The failure of Nicholas II of Russia to provide the basic necessities led to the Soviet Revolution. The failure of the Weimar Republic to provide the basic necessities led to the Third Reich. But here in the US there were no economic breakdowns, famines or other great crises to necessitate civil unrest. Affluenza is not a real plague!
For the first time that I can see in history, these times of great incivility are being driven by masses who are not driven to desperation by any legitimate circumstance. These are just malcontents behaving badly. Any desperation that they might feel is fictional. It would be a real crime if society as a whole allowed them to sink our ship "just because".
Yes, but did these "professionals" cover any of the stories highlighted by Chomsky, Zinn, etc., from the era of unfettered U.S. hegemony around the world? The backing of dictators (mostly right wing), and violent overthrows of legitimate governments (Iran, Chile)? Other than I.F. Stone of that time, I can think of none of these "professionals" that did their job right - holding their government up to the light and exposing lies.
shareSpeed-Daemon
lorene-lavora beat me to it, but I agree that your post was well-stated.
As a non-reactionary Medicare Age male, I’m hoping that I’ll never turn reactionary. I keep believing that, although I spent my formative years watching the falsely idyllic TV shows of the 1950s and early 1960s like Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best and The Donna Reed Show, there’s no reason for me to forget that we also experienced the brilliance of the evening network newscasts and Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now.
Whether reactionary or progressive, or old or middle-aged, nostalgia for the good parts of our younger years may be symptomatic of a desire to at least temporarily forget today’s stresses. While studying for a bar exam over 40 years ago, I might have been nostalgic for the days when I was studying for a fifth grade spelling test, or when I was sitting at the board of my college radio station’s studio, spinning records and reporting news stories ripped from a UPI teletype machine. While spending sleepless nights preparing for a trial or negotiating the settlement of complex litigation, I may become nostalgic for the days when I was celebrating after having passed that bar exam.
I liked The Newsroom and I’ll miss it for its emphasis on the importance of reporting well-researched and diligently investigated facts, while seriously questioning opinions. There’s plenty of great reporting being done all over the world, and the internet has made it easier to find serious news stories for those of us who couldn’t care less about the Kardashians or the Lucas Pruitt model of journalism as shown on The Newsroom. . . . And one of the nice aspects of the internet’s reach is that we can take time from reading about real news to come to websites like this for diversions . . . and often for some very interesting discussions.
If it is what it is, what is it?
Thank you for your kind reply, kcornelg. I watched some of the same shows in my childhood. I suppose the big difference for me was going to be in the audience of "Bozo's Circus" and being captivated by what I never saw on the TV set: the lights, the cameras, and most of all the men in the control room. I completely ignored the clown show! Twice!
In my youth I hoped that by this time I would have a job not unlike the unnamed director on "The Newsroom", calling out cues in a calm deep tone to the technical director. Unfortunately Reagan's deregulation had other plans for me. I spun records in college and did some TV broadcasting before the change that made computer networking more attainable than being unable to climb higher than technical director. Still, even after all these years, every time I stay in one town long enough, I'll call up every chief engineer in town just to say howdy and introduce myself. It never has gone away for me.
I'll remember the show for all the things it got so right. The crackpotization of the Republican Party, the tail-wagging-dog culture of apps and their users, the short life of the geosynchronous satellite as a way to interconnect TV networks. "Speaking truth to idiots," another great line...
I predict that 10 years from now, the word "Internet" will be all but forgotten. Right now 99 out of 100 people can't say how their smartphones work. Some might muster a "wifi" [sic], but so few know it's a freaking radio!!!
Anyway, thanks again, great post.
My personal favorite "greatest line ever" was when Jim said to Hallie "I beam signals into outer space every night" or something to that effect. I can relate to that because I've had my own love affair with broadcasting for most of my life. Although I know the underlying scientific principles in great detail, it's still magical to me.
I cut my teeth during the era of the bipolar transistor. It was all "P-N-P" and "N-P-N" back then. The only time I really studied vacuum tube circuits was to prepare for my 2nd Class and 1st Class R/T licenses. The only vacuum tubes I've really dealt with were mostly for lightning protection, in TV transmitters (and the transmitter vendor only touched those!) and the occasional 12AX7 that some idiot thought was a good idea in otherwise transistorized gear. I never had to learn much FET theory beyond the basics, and went right on to non-linear circuits...
BTW I probably never beamed anything into outer space. I didn't do network uplinks, and our broadcast antennas had an electrical downtilt of 0.5 degree, which put the bulk of the energy on the ground where TV sets were. I laugh whenever I see Sci-Fi with space aliens watching TV broadcasts, since it just doesn't work that way.
I'll have to watch the whole lecture later on, but thanks!
Great post Speed Daemon. Brilliant insight as the the 100th/infinite monkey theory producing the next Shakespeare.
That "Snark..." quote is my fave as well.
Few people on the "Interwebz" nowadays can tell you when the Berlin Wall fell and it's significance- Probably cannot tell you what country it's in either without Googling it.
What I thought made this season a master piece was that the politics was almost completely thrown out. Not even many 'true believers" want to be subjected to proselytization. Bravo to Sorkin for going the social commentary route.
Never slap a man while he's chewin' tobacco.- Frank Underwood
Thank you, I'm glad that you got something from my post! Trust me, it's rare around here...
I had the rare privilege of getting to see the Berlin Wall (and a divided Berlin) in the mid-'70s, when things were really cooking. Hard to believe now that we climbed up observation platforms after reading the disclaimer that the Stasi could and might shoot at us!
I didn't notice the politics thing as they switched from the political news that they were reporting to office politics. Same animal in a different suit IME. I don't see speaking truth, even when idiots can hear as "proselytization" either. Besides, one of the big messages that the show sent was that attention whores didn't get air time on their news program. It's not Sorkin's fault that there was a bumper crop of nitwits and attention whores seeking coverage by the news during the show's run.
Thank you for saying what so many others seem terrified to.
sharePerhaps my own biases will show through as a misunderstanding on my part, but I'm surprised that you didn't mention what I think was one of the greatest moments in television.....although it was admittedly much more than one line.
I'm speaking of course of the first 8 minutes of the series, which I'm sure many people who haven't even followed the show have seen. What starts as a seeming screed against the sacred cow of exceptionalism by a jaded millionaire blowhard ends up as an inspirational oratory by a man with a real sense of integrity who feels the loss of a past that is so misunderstood or forgotten by so many people. He is not actually a self-loathing elitist - at least, not in that moment - but a man who legitimately bemoans a phenomenal history that has been not lost but discarded.
I say this in reference to your post, because your tone resembles that of Will McAvoy in that moment. And you seem to reference that speech in your last paragraph, and create what is almost an abbreviated, reworded version in your penultimate.
I too miss the days when intelligence was admired and not vilified...and how one feels pressure to dumb down everything one might say so as to not appear patronizing.
Quick! Rewrite The Gettysburg Address in 140 characters.
Perhaps you missed the line about a boat with a hole in it, and that hole has always existed and will never be fixed... and the trick is to bail water faster than it rushes in.
did you miss that line?
You're right nonsense has ALWAYS existed, right down to religion. It has ALWAYS been the job of wiser people, who were ALWAYS in the minority to inform the larger populous of facts in an honest and convincing manner.
Do you think the theory of gravity was an easy sell? For every step of our human progress, GOOD PEOPLE, GOOD SMART PEOPLE, GOOD FEW PEOPLE HAD TO DRAG THE REST OF THE UNINFORMED INTO THE FUTURE BECAUSE IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO... BECAUSE IT WAS RIGHT IN FACT.
That problem has always existed... and it will always exist. With technology we have the uninformed repeating so much nonsense, even profiting off it at disgusting levels of wealth for their own powerful gains...
The boat is full of water.
Yes it is and we are all submarine captains.
Never slap a man while he's chewin' tobacco.- Frank Underwood
Trust me, the internet was way different before AOL introduced it to the unwashed masses. As a friend once said, "the Baltimore Country Club was a better place before the membership roster became every third name in the phone book."
I think my percentage of Chimp DNA is higher than others. Cleaver Greene
But that's the thing--it wasn't the "great unwashed" who could afford an AOL account, it was people with greater than average means.
I agree. people always want to romanticize the past, while complaining about the "kids these days". kids were just as dumb now as they were when I was one, and politics was never clean
sharePenn & Teller? Negro, please.
Penn Gillette is an idiot blow-hard who loves to distort facts to make whatever point he's pushing that day. You might as well get your facts from the Drudge report.
Yea...lol.
The good old days. I think that will be spoken by every single generation no matter how crappy their teens were. "Remember the market crash of 2008....man, good times."
When I was young.... "Wow remember how Reagan got shot... man good times"
Whatever is nostalgia seems like good times doesn't it....whether it was good or bad. I mean, I had some crappy times that weren't at all nostalgic but some of them were.
http://www.youtube.com/user/alphazoom
https://soundcloud.com/#carjet-penhorn
Yes..."Network". A whole bunch of people with the wealth and free time to watch a box for hours on end, and who are "mad as hell" for no other reason than because someone told them to be so...
Outstanding reference!
LOL
The 100 hottest chicks that ever lived. Ad infinitum.
Never slap a man while he's chewin' tobacco.- Frank Underwood
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all the networks are own my six major billionary companies they control evrything you watch 24/7/365 now go and check out pluto tv on amazon and watch real news
"Lets make some LSD" Dr Walter Bishop.
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