>> News channels were always like this. We just have the internet to cross check now.
CNN was not in the beginning. They were a scrappy news channel that came to prominence with real reporting (most notably in the Iraq war). They got corrupted once it was clear they could not be ignored.
News sources have probably always had bias, but it was never such blatant characature back in the day.
Anecdotally, (and I am American) it was also somewhere between the Gulf War and the OJ Simpson trial that cable changed from some exotic thing that rich people paid for to something a lot of your friends had.
Bernard Shaw and a couple of other reporters from what I remember. I distinctly recall tuning in a few minutes after things started and listening to them hide in the hotel room as Iraqi security started to clear the hotel that all of the reporters were staying in at the time.
CNN launched in 1980.
The Gulf war was in 1990.
Larry King Live premiered on CNN in 1985.
CNN has long been a mix of news and opinion, like all news media ever. That’s why media exists: to push facts and interpretations of those facts.
Media is not a charity: William Randolph Hearst and Ted Turner want something for their money: they want to control the narrative.
It has always been blatant: you just haven’t been paying attention. Hearst started a war! He was such a reviled figure that one of the greatest movies ever made was made to dunk on him.
I distinctly remember when CNN jumped the shark. It was during the 2000 election coverage when they started introducing all these computer generated graphics.
I remember their coverage of Monica Lewinsky and related issues being pretty annoying, along with the rest of the networks.
I remember when Clinton tried to attack claimed al Qaeda infrastructure after the embassy bombings and made a speech about bin Laden (the first time I heard the name) they asked if it was to distract from Monica. Compared it to the film Wag the Dog.
News channels do not broadcast 24 hours of news. The majority of programming are personalities, opinions and "recaps." The actual news comes on in hour-long chunks once early in the morning, mid-day and at primetime.
I'm not going to say my news is perfect, but it's from a non-commercial / nonpartisan organization, they get money from the government / taxes (which is less than ideal, but their independence is codified I believe), etc. It sticks to the news, professional-like.
Switch to the commercial channels (we thankfully don't have major 24 hour news channels) and the news on there has much more er, Personalities, quirkiness, some silly background news, and a weatherman that travels the country to visit events and petting zoos and shit.
The trick is paying attention long enough to determine if sources stay consistent, issue proper corrections & retractions, are intellectually honest, etc.
Or if the purveyors are just hacking ratings, for more ad revenue.
In the 80s, I eschewed a career in broadcast media. I loved the gear, doing creative stuff, working in the studio. But absolutely hated the business. "If it bleeds, it leads."
We've been complaining about outrage engines since the beginning. Social media just made things much much worse.
State-funded media has it's own problems but at least there's some accountability which is effectively nonexistent for large media companies. As long as the free market rewards sensationalism, there will be profit driven "journalism." Ultimately, the general populace needs to be educated on the veracity of news in the digital age; how to spot a misleading headline, and how to corroborate actual expository works.
I think some news was always like this; but I think investigative journalism like Glenn Greenwald used to be given more time in the primetime news. Really shocking things were uncovered and actually spread (like Norman Gorin's 60 Minutes Report on 1976 swine flu). There is news that is fantastic now, but it is getting pushed further and further out.
