Nearly four decades before anyone thought to tack “#fake news” to the end of their Tweet, media theorist, Neil Postman, was decrying the dangers of watching the nightly news. Now, this is ironic because “the news” is often heralded as the “smart man’s TV programming.” Case in point, whenever I tell someone I got rid of my TV — this is no joke — 99% of the time, people respond, “Yeah, I never watch TV. The only thing I watch is the news.” In other words, news is the choice of informed, intelligent individuals and is a legitimate reason, in and of itself, to own a television. It is the moral exception to the rule.
Postman, on the other hand disagrees. He refers to television news as “Vaudeville acts.” He goes on to state, “For those who think I am here guilty of hyperbole, I offer the following.” Postman then goes on to quote Robert MacNeil, the executive producer and co-anchor of the MacNeil-Lahrer Report (now known as the PBS NewsHour).
“The idea [of TV news] is to keep everything brief, n ...
