> Oh, that started well before the internet was open to the public. I pretty much blame it on CNN. CNN proved that news can be a profit center. Before that, news was not expected to make much money, it was considered more of a public service.
The "news" has been a business forever and profit versus journalistic standards has always been a huge point of contention. Pulitzer versus Hearst was such a business battle that standards started to fall apart and distrust in media hit a local maxima. That resulted in a big shift towards less sensationalism.
Television news itself is a huge contributor to lax standards, but that far predated CNN. What CNN brought to the table was news as a constant stream of information and near immediacy.
The web 2.0 days brought a new surge of Gotta Be First journalism that made information so much less reliable.
But we adapt to all of these things as media consumers. What people are generally bad at is not discerning opinion/editorializing versus hard news. That's where we need to become more savvy.
The "news" has been a business forever and profit versus journalistic standards has always been a huge point of contention. Pulitzer versus Hearst was such a business battle that standards started to fall apart and distrust in media hit a local maxima. That resulted in a big shift towards less sensationalism.
Television news itself is a huge contributor to lax standards, but that far predated CNN. What CNN brought to the table was news as a constant stream of information and near immediacy.
The web 2.0 days brought a new surge of Gotta Be First journalism that made information so much less reliable.
But we adapt to all of these things as media consumers. What people are generally bad at is not discerning opinion/editorializing versus hard news. That's where we need to become more savvy.