Perhaps if all the peoples of the world understand what war really means, we would eliminate it.
Walter CronkiteRead
When I stepped down from the evening news at the age of 65, in '81, things were still going well. Immediately after that, the whole tenor of the CBS News Department changed.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the changes in journalism and news reporting after a significant figure retires.
Walter Cronkite's quote highlights the impact of leadership in the news department, suggesting that his departure marked a turning point for CBS News. It underscores how the presence or absence of influential individuals can significantly shape the culture and direction of organizations, especially in journalism, where credibility and trust are paramount.
In practice
During a panel discussion on the evolution of news reporting, one might reference Cronkite's quote to illustrate how leadership impacts media.
Perhaps if all the peoples of the world understand what war really means, we would eliminate it.
The death of Churchill at 90 was one of those watershed moments in which the obituary rises to a special calling beyond the sharing of remembered times. It gave an older generation a rare opportunity to explain something of itself to its children.
I suppose popularity is measured by ratings. If a broadcaster is known as the leader because of ratings, then that's where people most want to be seen and heard, so there's no question that there's an advantage.
Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.
I feel no compulsion to be a pundit. As a matter of fact, I really don't have that much to say about most things. Working with hard news satisfies me completely.
I think that our comfort is in our history.
It is not entirely true that a TV producer or reporter has complete control over the contents of programs. The interests and inclinations of the audience have as much to do with the what is on television as do the ideas of the producer and reporter.
It's great to engage with the mainstream media to get messages out, but the most empowering tool is to create records of our lives, and our own images, which are not filtered through judgements, biases, or misunderstandings.
The newspaper offers something very different from Google's aggregators. It offers a value system, an idea of what matters in the world. Newspapers need to start articulating that value.
Too many of our conversations in the media hinge on conflict delivered in three-second sound bites.
The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.
Even the reporting of news has to be understood not as propaganda for any particular ideology, liberal or conservative, but as propaganda for commodities β for the replacement of things by commodities, use values by exchange values, and events by images.
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