PBS ALERT – The McLaughlin Group on the problematic of blogging
UPDATE: - Transcript – Audio file – Video file -
MS. COX: Well, I’ve always said that journalism is something you do, not something that you are. And so anyone can come in and act a journalist. I mean, it doesn’t matter where they do it. So, I mean, we all have the potential to be journalists now. I think it’s actually probably what the — [...]
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: [The] characteristic of what we find on the Web or by bloggers. What we find is a school of piranhas who love to have their knives sharpened, who love to trap the press. They’re “gotcha” journalists. That’s what they are, many people believe. That’s not necessarily my view. (Laughter.) They move with lightning speed.
What about that? Is it a foray of negativists who are sitting around eating jelly donuts at the table and typing at the same time?
MS. COX: In their pajamas.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: In their pajamas. I’m asking you.
MR. GANT: In some respects, we’re returning to the type of journalism that we had more than a century ago, where it was much — you had many more voices.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You mean, the muckrakers.
MR. GANT: Well, muckrakers and others. Our tradition of journalism in this country [the US] isn’t what we’re used to in the past several decades, where it became corporatized to a large extent and there was this notion that you had to be objective to be a real journalist. But that’s not the real tradition of American journalism. It was very much opinionated, and sometimes uninformed. [...]
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Very interesting discussion, which took the full half hour. Don’t miss it.
- On PBS in the US.
- On CNBC Europe in… well… in Europe, of course.
IF YOU MISS THE SHOW ON TV: On Monday, they will give you the transcript, and, on Wednesday, they will put the video online. I will blog about it, then, probably.
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