FROM THE NETWORK THAT BROUGHT YOU RATHERGATE: CBS’s Ted Koppel views Sean Hannity and “all these opinion shows” as “bad for America:”
“You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts,” said Koppel to Hannity.
“That’s sad, Ted,” said Hannity to Koppel. “You’re selling the American people short,” he added, describing Americans as broadly able to discern between facts and opinions.
Koppel described the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine – a former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) policy mandating news media broadcasters’ coverage of “controversial issues” be fair per the FCC’s opinion – as facilitating the creation of “two separate worlds” of politics via the ascendance of Rush Limbaugh.
Advocates for the Fairness Doctrine described the federal government’s control of political and partisan editorializing among news media broadcasters as serving “the public interest.” They credited the Fairness Doctrine with allowing Americans a “reasonable opportunity [to consume] the presentation of contrasting viewpoints.” “The right of the viewing and listening public to suitable access to the marketplace of ideas,” they added, “justifies restrictions on the rights of broadcasters [to determine their own editorial perspectives].”
Wow, somebody tell Koppel that in addition to broadcast television and terrestrial radio, there’s this new-fangled communications medium called the Internet as well, with [CUE SAGAN VOICE] Billions and Billions of Websites to match the worldviews and tones of a diverse multicultural readership. Why, it’s as if there’s more to journalism in the 21st century than just three commercial networks, a couple of big city newspapers and radio these days! Someone alert Ted!
Fortunately in response, “Dana Loesch Takes No Prisoners in Fox and Friends Interview (Video):”
On Ted Koppel’s comment that Sean Hannity is “bad for America”…
“He’s the last person on Earth to accuse someone of being bad for America simply because they are offering opinion. This is the problem with so much of legacy media. This is why you see New Media come up. People are tired of these anchors and reporters giving their opinion as unfettered fact and acting as though there is no bias on their part at all whatsoever.”
The difference between Dana Loesch and Ted Koppel, according to Ms. Loesch? She’s being honest about her bias. She admits she is biased towards the “constitution and natural rights”, thus all of her opinions are seen through that prism. If only we could get those in Big Media to understand this one simple thing, it would improve their credibility almost immediately.
It’s pretty tough to be a spokesman for a channel that made its bones with Walter Cronkite warbling on about Barry Goldwater being a crypto-Nazi and global cooling, his successor cooking the books with Rathergate, and his successor reading Christmas poems to beg for Obamacare (and then having a Rathergate of her own after she left the network) and still claim – in 2017! – to a proponent of “objective” journalism.