Reaction to Contemporary Journalism

Reaction to Contemporary Journalism Name: Instructor: Institution: Date: Over the recent past, there seems to be a rapidly reducing gap between news in the media, and entertainment as well as the general culture. It has been quite difficult to discern between them to the extent that real and fake news are under the same subset. This is a clear indication of the crisis that exists in broadcast journalism. While itself as a field has grown exponentially over the recent past, it is quite clear that the problem is in its content. The quality of its content has really been wanting for quite some time now. This has altogether combined to influence in one way or the other, the American political narrative. John Stewart provides criticisms of Crossfire, CNN, and broadcast journalism as a whole, which resonate to a great extent with Postman’s arguments. Stewart states that the current media houses should indeed “stop hurting America” with their rather inept way of replacing serious journalism with some form of comedy. This is quite true in the present day, as there seems to be quite a thin difference between the present mode of journalism and old school comedy. The two seem to be quite intricately related both in form and expression. Television punditry today departs greatly from what was there initially. What can be seen presently is a thorough and desperate search for publicity from the audience. In the book amusing ourselves to Death, Neil Postman outlines how various human interactions influence or affect message delivery. Taking the example of smoke for example, he notes that while it is a form of communication, it would not deliver all kinds of messages. He asserts that “Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence.” He notes that smoke cannot be used in disseminating philosophical information. Similarly therefore, it shows how the program The Daily Show helps illustrate the various ‘gags’ placed by contemporary media over its very own content. Postman therefore believes that all media houses in one way or the other influence the kind and nature of content they produce. Jon Stewart in the two videos is criticizing CNN. He notes that it is supposed to be used in providing the people of the United States the truth about the things that are going on with their leaders instead they are all about entertainment. While in the Crossfire Show, he criticizes the host of the show on how they conduct themselves when they are having politicians over and asking them questions about what the politicians do for their people. He complains that the host just doesn’t ask the serious questions required so that the politicians give the people who are watching an insight of what they are doing for them. Most of the times they just ask irrelevant questions just to keep viewers entertained because most of the questions are just asked for fun. While Jon is at the show telling them this, they just make fun of him and his show, not taking heed of what he is telling them which is very disheartening because he is telling them things that are very important. Instead, they try to compare their show with his comedy show which its main important aspect is to make comedy for the viewers, unlike their show wh...