Sometimes answers to current problems can be found by looking to the past. Bias, fake news, and an antagonistic spirit plague the modern American news media…known as the media elite. Journalists would be wise to look to the past for help.
Walter Cronkite helped pioneer television news. He began as a reporter 1937, was recruited to CBS in 1950 and anchored of CBS Evening News from 1962 until 1981.
Cronkite once said of journalists, “Our job is only to hold up the mirror – to tell and show the public what has happened.”
If journalists defined success as honesty and fairness, rather than being exclusive or a famous, perhaps today’s viewers and readers would trust them a little more.
(Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress)