the tindog coffeehouse

Former Dateline reporter John Hockenberry has written a lengthy article for Technology Review about what he learned about network television news in the 9 years he worked for NBC. In the article he complains about the decline of TV news from a fact-reporting organization daring enough to embrace new technology to a technology-averse info-tainment machine constantly worried about its viewers’ “emotional center.”

While the article is interesting, it’s hard to take Hockenberry seriously as he doesn’t understand that he’s contradicting himself. He waxes poetic about the good ol’ days of Edward R. Murrow and how the technology of television “would take Americans ever deeper into the battlefield, and even onto the surface of the moon. Communication technologies,” he says, “transformed America’s view of itself, its politics, and its culture.”

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