All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week's guest, Danny Schechter, editor of Mediachannel.org and the blog NewsDissector, examines the influence of bottom-line interests on news divisions. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Now, here's Danny:

For me CBS was always the mothership of TV news and standard-setter for the industry. Even when I worked at ABC News and CNN, there was a sense of CBS as the news leader. The film “Good Night, and Good Luck” offered a flashback to the days when the network made its reputation by challenging those in power. Today, it seems that it’s safer to play the role of handmaiden.

CBS is no longer an oasis in the desert of that proverbial great wasteland but a port of call. The “golden years” are honored in retrospectives but CBS too has succumbed to the bottom-line dictates of corporate pressure. The House of Murrow has been repositioned as the home of “Survivor,” country music awards and dramas about crime scenes.

Like other networks, CBS has gone from serving democracy to targeting demographics. News is no longer what the “Big Eye” is known for. The news division was strip-mined by Larry Tisch when he was in command. Later show-biz merged with news-biz under what the kids who work at MTV call “the Viacomese.”

What was always a tug of war between conscience and commerce seems have been decided by bottom-line dictates.

Read full post…