Tag: journalism

Evidence of the Decline and Fall of FOX News

Buck Banks

“You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points. … This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.”

— Ralph Peters

McCain: A Free Press Protects Against Dictators

Buck Banks

If you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.

— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), slamming President Trump’s attacks on the media this week, CNN reports.

A 20-Question Quiz for the Media

Buck Banks

1680283We live in an era where the very foundations of journalism are increasingly under attack, where “fake news” is ascendent and the intellect and attention span of the public is on the decline.

In response, the editors of Pensito Review, in consultation with researchers at the Moscow Center for Media Studies, have crafted this 20-question quiz to help journalists clarify their mission and find their place in the cosmos during the current Trump administration.

1. Are you feeling depressed, demoralized, disgusted, disenfranchised or simply dissed by the state of the news media and its public perception today? (select one)

  • One of them
  • Two of them
  • Three of them
  • All of them
  • None of them

[…]

Journalism Facing a ‘Hellscape of Lies and Distorted Reality’

Buck Banks

Journalists are in for the fight of their lives. And they are going to have to be better than ever before, just to do their jobs. They will need to work together, be prepared for legal persecution, toughen up for punishing attacks and figure out new ways to uncover and present the truth. Even so — if the past really is prologue — that may not be enough.

— Margaret Sullivan

Next Four Years Critical for American Journalism

Buck Banks

Given everything we know about Donald Trump from his divisive, demagogic presidential campaign, the next four years will be a stress test for the American system. … The Trump Years promise to be full of Oval Office insults, Twitter attacks and disregard for facts. But rather than viewing the prospect of covering a Trump administration with exhaustion, we should feel invigorated. Because when this time is done, we will look back on it as the best and most important time to be a journalist – not because it was easy, but because it was hard and our sense of mission was clear: to respect the office of the President while holding the person in power accountable against a standard of enduring American values.

— John Avlon

Life Expectancy of Chinese Journalists is Just 45.7 Years

Buck Banks

45.7

The average life expectancy of journalists in China, with their average age at hospitalization being 44.2 years, according to a survey by the China Journalists Association. Almost all of Chinese journalists experience ailments such as headaches, migraines, body aches, frequent constipation or diarrhea, and more than half of the journalists are in a unhealthy state. Many said they suffer from fatigue, poor sleep, loss of appetite, and poor eyesight due to stress.