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Quote of the Day: Dad on Media
From my father’s interview at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Oral History Collection…
Interviewer: Is there a prejudice among print journalists against TV reporters?
Peter Braestrup: Oh, yes, to put it politely. I think I’m one of the more extreme cases. I don’t think the other print chaps think about it that much. I think of that wonderful quote from Michael Arlen, the New Yorker TV critic. He said, “Propaganda is now the way television people have come to think of as the vocabulary for dealing with real events. What is important,” Arlen said, “is not just what’s happening, but how the audience can be brought to feel about it.” Well, that’s something else, that ain’t serious journalism.
Interviewer: It’s perhaps advocacy journalism…
Peter Braestrup: No. It’s basically Hollywood. A Hollywood film tries to make people feel about the characters and the action a certain way. That’s what drama is all about. It’s aimed at the emotions. It’s not an information service.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
Kate, would love to hear more from and about your Dad and his work; we’ll not see his like again. S/F, Mr. B!
Even the print media are like that these days. Headline writers do it. And photos of public figures are meant to make people emote about them. Show a president with his chin up and you create one effect. Showing him with an awkward facial expression creates another.
More than thirty-five years after the interview, it’s more true now than ever. As the Reticulator said, it has now contaminated every aspect of the media and there is very little hard news coverage anymore.
This is an entry in Ricochet’s Quote of the Day Series. That’s at least the second quote this month of a Ricochet member’s family member, too. One doesn’t have to quote politicians or other famous people. Whoever it is that you would like to quote, you can sign up here. We still have August 30th and 31st open. Once those are claimed, September will be opened for business. Wouldn’t you like to help us move into a virgin month?
Fantastic post. Sad – because it confirms what we chose to ignore. And the situation has only worsened. But still a fantastic post.
“That used to wear you out. You’ve been out getting shot at during the day and then you’d hitchhike your way back to the Danang press center and then you’d switch gears and . . . write your story, and then try to get Becky on the army telephone system: not easy. In some ways it was harder on the psyche than being a rifle platoon leader, which I was in Korea”
What a remarkable man . .
And I’m not surprised to encounter his exceptional intelligence and skills.
Here’s my quote of the day : An apple never falls far from the tree.
Thank you, @Trink! High praise!
I’d not heard that one. Brilliant.
One of his best columns was a rant about TV weather. Mike took the position that the TV weather creatures were getting over-dramatic. Something along the lines of “in Chicago, it gets cold and snowy in winter — get over it.”
I had a lunch conversation with my brother the other day about journalism. As print magazines and newspapers are contracting and dying, I worry very much about being able to get good information. With the propaganda element of cable news and the click bait element of online outlets and the bias of print publications, I think… what is a journalist again?
My brother proposed the market will fix it as bloggers rise up and get followed, but I don’t think independent bloggers have the ability to investigate except, perhaps, local matters. What blogger can go investigate what’s happening in the Middle East? Or Latin America? Or three states over?
Can someone make me feel less gloomy?
Most big newspapers don’t have foreign desks any more. (Claire Berlinsky has told us about this.) When I first subscribed to the The Wall Street Journal in the early 80s it had a good foreign section, with news from on-the-spot reporters. It eliminated all that a long time ago.
I think the ability to get news about local matters from independent bloggers would be a wonderful thing. Local newspapers no longer have reports on school board meetings from free-lance journalists, and it would be great for some form of that to make a return.
But what incentive is there for local bloggers to do such a thing? I can think of a few, but can’t think of enough to sustain it. A web site with google ads isn’t going to return much.
I can’t think of enough either. I think it’s a very big problem, actually. Most “news” outlets are just aggregators that don’t generate original content.
I would say academics continue certain types of research, but they delve into the less “current” and there are fewer and fewer incentives for anyone to do something like… say… get a doctorate in history. Besides, that funnel for information is very narrow and often also not objective.
Great quote not only because of content but because of historical context! Thank you.
I’ve been frustrated by the errors I read in the little area where I have special expertise. Journalists do little digging, maybe because they don’t have time to do it, and tend to repeat the fashionable errors.
Thanks Kate for posting this. I was a big fan of the Wilson Quarterly.
So, that means they are like most other people. The difference is, it is their job to get the facts right. Too bad they don’t see it that way anymore.
Hasn’t ‘objectivity’ in reportage/journalism been a rather recent – and self-determined – development in some quarters?
Yes. It’s definitely a Twentieth Century development. Before that, few ever tried to be or claim objectivity. It got so bad with the days of Yellow Journalism that there was a temporary backlash for objectivity. Then it descended down into “objectivity.”
Irony-quotes optional, in many quarters…