When I was growing up in the U.S. in the 1970s, 35-40% of an average nightly newscast focused on international stories.
I think journalist is a great profession. It's complicated now. People talk about the demise of investigative reporting.Newspapers play an amazing role in our society, and I still think they are important. I'm sorry newspaper circulation is down. Ultimately, the importance of newspapers can't be replaced.
I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.
I don't read newspapers in the morning. I take a look at the dailies in the afternoon, but only when I've finished my work for the day. Reading about what is happening in Turkey once again would only be demoralizing for me.
Facing fewer subscriptions, ratings drops, et al., media is catching on: people don't want endless editorializing. They want the facts, Jack. If you're going to be op/ed, at least be up front about it.
People say to me all the time, "I get my news from your show." And that isn't the way they should get their news. But the choice is not between getting their news the right way and getting their news from my show. The choice is that they won't get any at all unless you give it to them in an entertaining package.
I consume the news daily. I'm not avoiding it.
I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.
Once you get off the network news train, it's hard to get back on.
The pitfall of what's happening in the media is if you're under thirty, you get your news from the Internet and The Daily Show, and there's not much discrimination between what they find on the front page of The New York Times and what they find on the Internet. That's not a bad thing, in the sense that people don't get spoon - fed anymore.
I just don't need cable news. There's nothing that happens on cable news that I don't already know. I'm talking about just the acquisition of information, learning things. What is on cable TV is not that. Cable news isn't news. What is happening on cable news right now is a political assassination of not just Donald Trump, but of ideas and cultural mores that I believe in.
I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.
Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate the headlines, are pure fat.
Never in history have so many people consumed so much news. This is a boon for democracy. Although reporting is often an irritant to those in power, high-quality news and analysis is essential to any political system that depends on giving citizens the facts so they can draw their own conclusions. The problem is that today’s internet distribution systems distort the flow of economic value derived from good reporting.
See linked quotes for a counterpoint.
Now your kids can't escape. Thirteen-year-olds back then, if they didn't watch the evening news, they didn't see news. If they didn't watch the 6:30 or seven p.m. news, they didn't see news. Today younger people have much more access to that kind of hard news than you did when you were 13 back then.
Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism... When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.
I got hooked to American news like a great TV season. It plays like fiction. I would come home from work, and I would put it on, and I would stay up until 2 in the morning watching it and get up in the morning and watch it.
I think one of the real issues that we're faced with is how we consume news, how the media is perceived, how fake news is gaining a degree of currency without criticism that is dangerous, in my judgement.
I'm the son of a newsman, I grew up around news, so I can understand the issue, which is that papers are losing subscribers and they're getting less and less outlets... it's a tricky thing. You're going to have to sell papers. The problem is, there's so little reporting anymore.