Bahamas Prime Minister Blames US Cable News For Collapse Of Journalism

Over the weekend, Bahamas Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis addressed the Third Annual Press Club Awards Banquet, where he blamed the collapse of journalism standards on 24-hour cable news shows in the United States. He said, the declining of standards “would not have been allowed in previous times” and urged local journalist not to be  “champions of any political party, business, group or interest in a country”.

While addressing the Third Annual Press Club Awards Banquet Munnis said,

This is not a practice that would be allowed by journalists in other countries. I am not speaking here of editorial writing. A journalist and a columnist are distinctly different roles.

 

The 24-hour cable news shows in the United States have in a number of ways led to a lessening of standards that would not have been allowed in previous times. There has been a considerable blurring of reporting and commentary.

 

It is telling when certain standards have been breached, that some in the press do not even realize that a standard has been breached.

 

Journalists are not supposed to be champions of any political party, business, group or interest in a country.

Minnis noted that journalist must report news on a fair and balance perspective while avoiding conflict of interests, adding “the best journalism criticises, celebrates and inspires”. In the United States, that is certainly not the case with 24-hour cable news networks waging an informational war against the American people flooding them in a DDOS style attack of misinformation. The constant bombardment of Russia/Trump collusion stories have sent the trust in television news to record lows.

The Jamaican Observer ends the report by saying,

Minnis said, adding that the press has an essential role in promoting good governance, transparency and accountability.

 

“By pressing public officials for accurate and timely information, the press helps citizens to learn about the decisions being made by a government on their behalf,” he told the awards ceremony.  

It seems as Bahamas Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis and the American people have something in common and it’s the distrust of the mainstream media. The one question we ask mainstream media execs: Was the fake news in the last election cycle worth the credibility loss?

Carl Bernstein: "Cold Civil War" Has Taken Over Media; "Fact-Based Debate Is Becoming Impossible"

To say that the U.S. media has a developed a bit of a credibility issue of late would be an understatement.  Mass hysteria over Trump"s victory in November has clearly resulted in a staggering deterioration in reporting standards as dropping the latest "bombshell" and inflicting the latest wound on the Trump administration has been prioritized over truthful, fact-based reporting.  All of which, as we"ve noted frequently of late, has resulted in a number of embarrassing corrections from several major media outlets who have been forced to admit their reporting was just outright "fake news."

And, in case you missed it, Carl Bernstein, who is best known for his investigative reporting for the Washington Post that shed light on the Watergate scandal, appeared on CNN, of all places, this weekend to discuss the media"s credibility issue which he argued has largely developed in the "cable news era" as media outlets have become increasingly politicized in their race for ratings.

Among other things, Bernstein said that media outlets in this country are engaged in a "cold civil war" and that, as a result, "fact-based debate is becoming impossible."

"The difference between Watergate and now is that we are in the midst of a cold civil war in this country.  A political and cultural civil war and all of our reporting is taking place in the context of that cold civil war.  And nothing quite like existed at the time of Watergate."

"And part of the cold civil war itself is the configuration of media with Fox News, with CNN, being perceived by different sets of viewers as representing different truths.  When, in fact, Fox has changed American politics as perhaps no institution has since its invention in 1996."

"But also cable news itself is a different form than we had at the time of Watergate.  We didn"t see reporters on television discussing their stories.  We do go farther on the air now by having reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN expand on their stories on the air.  Viewers are getting more interpreted information." 

"It is a different media universe and it is a cauldron taking place in this hot house of political debate in which a fact-based debate is becoming impossible in this culture and that"s part of the difficulty here.  We"re just lobbing accusations back and forth...in which a fact-based environment is almost impossible to maintain as long as the principals are willing to engage in the kind of rhetoric and lying that we have seen in this exchange of late."