Ted Koppel’s Cable News Broadside…

Ted Koppel pens an Op Ed in The Washington Post about cable news…particularly MSNBC and FNC…and talks about the profit motive in television news in general…

We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly – individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.

The commercial success of both MSNBC and Fox News is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.
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And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.

The Sunset for Larry King…

The LA Times’ James Rainey writes about Larry King’s last days as a CNN institution…

The radio-turned-television personality, who turns 77 on Friday, will be making four specials a year for CNN. He’ll be speaking to charitable groups. He’d like to do a little stand-up, Friars Club style. (If he lands that biggest of all interviews, King knows the first question he’d ask God: “Do you have a son? Because there’s a lot riding on the answer.”)

The talking will not be over. No way, not by a long shot, as the guys back in Brooklyn might say, and not just because King’s got all those projects lined up. The talking really won’t stop because of Nate ‘n Al’s.

Up to seven days a week, King will amble into the Beverly Hills delicatessen at about 8:30 a.m. His bowl of blueberries will be waiting, as will a pair of waitresses who have taken care of him for three decades along with, most importantly, some of the fellas who have known him since he was just little Larry Zeiger of Bensonhurst

Free for All: 11/12/10

What’s on your mind?