I took to YouTube last night to record my interpretation of Jon Stewart's lengthy and at times halting interview with Rachel Maddow, in which two people who obviously like and respect each other--and watch each other's shows--struggled over what's right and wrong in cable news.
"American journalism is dumber than most journalists, who often share my sense of absurdity about these practices. A major reason we have a practice less intelligent than its practitioners is the prestige that the View from Nowhere still claims..."
Wake up, journalists. You have no magic exemption from the requirements of political maturity. There are people out there who seek your destruction, and they are not evenly distributed.
“The term 'analysis,' as NPR is using it here, means something so obscure, tendentious and peculiar to the culture of professional journalism that the vacuous and tautological statements I’ve quoted are probably the network’s better option."
"It starts with a vision: what if we could cover all of it? When you try to act on that vision, you invariably run into problems. And it's sweating those problems that leads to innovation, or at least to new knowledge."
PRESSTHINK is written and edited by professor Jay Rosen, who taught at NYU from 1986 – 2025. The blog is about the fate of the press in a digital era and the challenges involved in rethinking what journalism is today. It presents essays, press criticism, interviews and speeches. PressThink does not accept advertising.