Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

Back in 1991? Desert Storm? That's not exactly how it happened. CNN did have the better coverage by far; that's when and how they made their name. But it was certainly known we'd be invading. Or rather--and it's an important distinction--defending our ally Kuwait, which Saddam had invaded.

CNN had been ahead with coverage all along, because it put people in place and developed sources. The networks thought doing it the way "we always do it" would be enough, and it wasn't. They paid by losing viewers.

But that isn't what I was talking about. I'm talking about the journalists themselves, not the network heads who make the expensive decisions. And yes, those people did fall down on the job in this election cycle. Les Moonves of CBS famously remarked that they gave him so much coverage because he was "good for ratings". That's wrong. But I was also not talking chiefly about TV. I was talking about print journalism.

As for verification, it's important. One of the many appalling things about this election was the publication, almost always by fringe news sites, of unverified--and often completely untrue--rumors. I'm sure you remember some of them. Yet Trump supporters gobbled that stuff up, and if criticized, yelled about the "mainstream media". Doing so didn't make the lies true, but for way too many people, people creating fake news just to make money were and are considered to be in some way legitimate.

And that is wrong.