I doubt there are many areas of agreement between Power Line and media critic Tom Rosenstiel. However, we do agree that, as Rosenstiel puts it in today's Washington Post, we have reached "the end of the era of network news." And we agree that this has occurred because "the networks abdicated their authority with the American people."

Rosenstiel bases his conclusion on reasoning very different than ours. He relies mainly on the fact that the major networks chose not to provide meaningful coverage of the two political conventions this year. Thus, more people watched the Republican convention on Fox than on any other network. I suspect that Rosenstiel considers this an "abdication" in the sense that the major networks gave up their right to spin the Republican goings-on, leaving the work to non-liberals. By contrast, we believe that the networks are still spinning and that the end of the era is the result of (1) the depths to which they are willing to sink and (2) the emergence of rival sources of information to point out these depths.

Rosenstiel argues that network journalism was originally designed to create prestige, but that the networks no longer care much about the prestige of their news organizations. We are dubious of "golden age of television journalism" claims, and suspect that the networks believe their news organizations will retain prestige enough by continuing to tilt towards "right-thinking" candidates and causes. They underestimate both the "pajama" crowd and the American people.

The dictionary defines "abdication" as (1) renunciation or (2) failure to undertake or fulfill a duty. Rosenstiel thinks the major networks abdicated in the first sense; we think they abdicated in the second. And we believe that it is the MSM as a whole, not just the broadcast networks, that is abdicating.

Posted by Paul at 11:41 AM  |    |  

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/mt/mt-diespammers.cgi/7809

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The end of the network news era:

» The Strings Are About To Break from BinaryRoadTrip
Bullets link to relevant pieces of information. UPDATE: Last point in red now links to Rather Biased. UPDATE 2: Powerlineblog's latest is now linked above in the first question in red. And somewhere I should have included a link... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 12:31 PM

» The Strings Are About To Break from BinaryRoadTrip
Bullets link to relevant pieces of information. UPDATE: Last point in red now links to Rather Biased. UPDATE 2: Powerlineblog's latest is now linked above in the first question in red. And somewhere I should have included a link... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 12:33 PM

» Network News: R.I.P. from Discriminations.us
">Tom Rosenstiel, director of the ">Project for Excellence in Journalism, has an OpEd in today's Washington Post on "The End of 'Network News.'" May it Rest in Peace. Athough meant as something of an elegy, giving the time the... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 12:35 PM

» DAN WHO? from JOE'S BLOG
Powerline An interview with Rather from Protein Wisdom Scrappleface From RatherBiased.com: "[T]hose of us in the mainstream media are trained to set our opinions aside as far as humanly possible." --Dan Rather in The Humanist, November/December 1990. ... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 03:09 PM

» Buzz On from La Shawn Barber's Corner
One more fake memos scandal post before moving on. Dvorak shows us how to create fake letters. Interested in a discussion about the IBM Selectric Composer? Knock yourselves out. Did you know the memos where verified over the telephone? Way t... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 04:28 PM

» the takeaway from pr9000.net ... ten pounds of hip in a five-pound blog.
As many of you know, this little corner of the internet was down for about 10 days or so, starting on Aug. 31 and ending just a few days ago. Sure, you can say that the proprietor of this site... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 08:55 PM

» the takeaway from pr9000.net ... ten pounds of hip in a five-pound blog.
As many of you know, this little corner of the internet was down for about 10 days or so, starting on Aug. 31 and ending just a few days ago. Sure, you can say that the proprietor of this site... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 08:57 PM

» DAN WHO? from JOE'S BLOG
Powerline An interview with Rather from Protein Wisdom Scrappleface Update: Wizbang Patterico MichelleMalkin SiSu INDCJournal IloveJetNoise DGCI Powerline again From RatherBiased.com: "[T]hose of us in the mainstream media are trained to set our opini... [Read More]

Tracked on September 12, 2004 10:34 PM

» No Longer Priests Of A Higher Truth from Straying Thoughts
There’s a reformation of sorts going on in the Church of the News Media. For decades, reporters, journalists, anchors, the priests of journalism, have been the sole source for news. They presented us with the news and if they left [Read More]

Tracked on September 13, 2004 12:09 AM

» SUICIDE ANCHORMAN from Beautiful Atrocities
With Bush cruising towards a second regime, Dan Rather decided to strap on a suicide memo & take him out. [Read More]

Tracked on September 13, 2004 12:30 AM