The tensions between fact and opinion, news and infotainment and the role of journalism in democracy were at the crux of
Ted Koppel's talk, "Journalism in Crisis: Who's to Blame?," at The Poynter Institute on Monday night.
During his talk, Koppel spoke about these tensions as they relate to the state of media, what got us here and how we can preserve the integrity of news.
I've selected some highlights from Koppel's talk below.
You can replay the chat and the video to find out which news source he would choose if he could have only one, to hear a song he wrote about President Richard Nixon at the Great Wall of China, and more.
Technology vs. journalism
Koppel
spoke at length about how social networking has changed the way people contribute to, and consume, news coverage.
"It is desperately important that everyone have the right to be a reporter, but I think we need to adapt to the new reality of the technology," he said. "The people who drafted the First Amendment ... never imagined a time when every idiot who says, 'Just bought some cauliflower at the Safeway' and then tweets that considers that to be a form of journalism."
Just because people have the technical capability to transmit something around the world with the click of a button, he noted, doesn't mean that what they produce is journalism.
Quality journalism involves a lot more, he said. "You're still going to need editors, you're still going to need people who are proofreaders," he said. "I don't envision a day when the reporters ... are going to be there on their own, functioning without any oversight. Pointing a camera at an event and covering the entire event is not journalism. Journalism is in the editing. Journalism is in the selection. Journalism is in the content."
Fact vs. opinion
Koppel said it's fine if people watch news commentary shows that lean one way or another as long as they don't turn to these programs for facts.
"I think that when Murdoch created the Fox [News] channel, there was a need for it," he said. "I had no trouble with there being a different ideological flavor." What is troubling, he said, is when conservative or liberal commentators disregard facts.
Koppel watches Fox News' Glenn Beck, he said, because he wants to hear what people with different ideological beliefs are saying. When he wants the facts, he reads
The New York Times and
The Wall Street Journal. "Without a North Star to guide us, all those other planets become sort of irrelevant," Koppel said. "We need to have some fixed position, and in journalism that fixed position is reporting."
Koppel said he believes people have "gone totally nuts" in being entitled to news they can choose -- news that resonates with their own opinions.
News vs. 'infotainment'
The media have a tendency, Koppel said, to dedicate more time than necessary to stories that have an "infotainment" element to them. Much of the health care debate, for example, revolves around partisan bickering that may be entertaining to watch but neglects the facts and doesn't offer new information.
He pointed to the Terri Schiavo
case as another example of infotainment. The issue of whether someone in her condition should be kept alive is no doubt important, Koppel said. But the media hyped up the story -- not so much because it was the most important news of the day but because it inflamed great passion among members of the public.
Cable vs. broadcast Cable news, Koppel said, is in a race to be first with the obvious.
He explained that owners of broadcast licenses are required to operate in the public interest. Cable channels are not regulated the same way and have no such requirement. Now it's all about making money, he said. If news channels can make more money by programming to younger audience members and by producing softer news rather than highlighting subjects of importance, that's what they'll do.
Print vs. online
Koppel said that given the advances of online news, he has little confidence in the future of print news. He pointed out that during a recent three-and-a-half hour flight from Washington to Dallas, he couldn't read the entire Sunday
New York Times. He used this story to illustrate his belief that newspapers in their print form cannot survive.
"Is there any way that newspapers are going to be able to afford to keep doing it the old fashioned way?" he asked. "I would be astonished if 20 years from now we still have a single paper newspaper. I think it's all going to be electronic by then."
Yet he reminded audience members that when television became a dominant medium, no one knew how it would be paid for. He trusts American ingenuity, he said, to come up with a sustainable business model for news.
