Chet Huntley and David Brinkley
When I was a kid, my parents turned on the nightly news to find out what was going on in the world. Without email, smartphones, social media, Reddits, Substack, and myriad electronic devices, their only two ways of getting news were the daily newspaper, the radio, and the 6;00 o’clock TV news. The newspaper took care of local events but the TV news reported on national and international news.
The only three networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC), had teams of reporters covering both national and international news. Their anchormen carried weight. John Chancellor, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Barbara Walters, Mike Wallace and others were people of stature and importance. They had gravitas. What they said mattered and they said it every night at 6:00 p.m.
As Dana Daly says in her Take Me Back blog on “12 Newscasters from the 60’s and 70s who were practically On Air Royalty,”
“These broadcast legends didn’t just report the news—they shaped how an entire generation understood the rapidly changing world, delivering the facts with a gravitas and authenticity that’s sorely missed in today’s 24-hour news cycle.”
Expanding and Contracting
John Chancellor
Over the years, the channels have expanded to include all-news networks like Fox News, MSNBC (now MS Now), and CNN. At the same time, the quality of the news they reported diminished.
It began in the nineties with the appearance of online advertising. TV advertising had supported the networks but that support weakened when the money moved online.
In addition, cable, streaming, and niche outlets splintered audiences. Networks no longer could assume a broad, general-interest viewer who expected global news. Having less money meant cutting back and they had to start somewhere.
The Axe Falls on International News
International news coverage became expensive, less profitable, and less prioritized in a digital environment dominated by domestic politics, social‑media algorithms, and shrinking newsroom budgets. Economic pressures, audience behavior, and structural changes in the media industry all converged to make foreign reporting one of the first areas cut.
International news went from being the jewel in the TV news crown to a financial burden and then to an endangered species. The networks fired reporters, closed news bureaus in foreign countries, and depended on feeds from independent sources to fill the cracks.
Today, most Americans have no idea what’s going on overseas, much less why they should know about it. Most Americans barely know who’s running their own country and have not concern for what’s going on outside of it. Most would be surprised to hear that the United Nations is in New York City.
This, of course, is a chicken-and-egg thing. Networks news outlets no longer assume Americans are broad, general-interest viewers who expect global news, so they don’t provide it, which means fewer Americans are interested in global news. International news outlets still cover it, of course, but you will only find those online.
The Audience Splinters
Then came the rise of social media and the associated fragmentation of other types of coverage. Cable, streaming, and niche outlets splintered audiences. This shifted the news market from “broadcast to narrowcast.” Outlets responded by tailoring content to smaller, more specific audiences.
Large corporate owners concerned themselves with profitability and efficiency, not expansive global journalism. Product quality no longer mattered, only the numbers did. The news focus dropped to what would draw viewers instead of informing them.
In addition, new corporate ownership placed pressure on their news departments to report only events that made the company look good. As political influence grew over the two Trump presidencies, the news departments were forced to modify content to eliminate any thing critical of the administration. The appointment of Bari Weiss at CBS News and her ham-fisted approach to 60 Minutes coverage offers an excellent example of what happens next.
The Nightly News Format Formula
The result is what we see now on the nightly news. It has a standard formula that looks like this:
- A weather story. I’m old enough to remember when the only weather considered news consisted of major catastrophes or huge body counts. Now the news begins with coverage of the day’s worst weather across the country and weather maps showing where tomorrow’s disasters are likely to happen.
- Two national news stories. These short stories might cover war, politics, polls and elections, administration misdeeds, and judicial decisions. Lasting about ten minutes, they contain the only real substance in most nightly newscasts.
- One international story: This segment happens only in case of war, atrocity, particularly important elections, or a presidential visit to a foreign country. Otherwise, the rest of the world might as well not exist.
- Disaster Stories: We see several examples of train wrecks, highway accidents, helicopter crashes, small planes landing on highways, airport near-misses on the runway, plane crashes, trains hitting cars, and jack-knifed trucks. Many of these accidents would formerly have been considered local news, not of sufficient importance to be of merit in a national news broadcast.
- One miscellaneous story: You pick it. This story usually comes from a local news subsidiary and covers something that would never have received national attention in better days.
- A human -interest story: This is the feel-good ending every night. It usually focuses on (pick one or two): High-school sports teams, veterans returning home, lost pets returning home, kids raising money for a good cause, small town mobilizes to do a good deed, a group builds a home for an old person, a veteran, or a disabled American, a kid sinks a basketball, an injured person overcomes a disability.
The Nightly News Devolves
That’s it. Walter Cronkite would roll over in his grave if he could see what his legacy has devolved into. Huntley and Brinkley would be shocked at the pablum is being spooned into the American brain. John Chancellor would rail against the lack of news objectivity. They would all be right.
As Dana Daly says:
“These broadcast pioneers defined an era when the evening news served as America’s town square—a shared experience that connected us regardless of geography or background. They weren’t just reading teleprompters; they were writing themselves into our collective memory as the people we trusted to make sense of a world that sometimes seemed senseless. Though today’s fragmented media landscape may never again produce figures with such universal reach, their legacy lives on in the gold standards they established for accuracy, integrity, and connection with viewers.”
Courtesy of Niemanlab.org
The accuracy, integrity, and viewer connection are all gone. The time has come to break my nightly news habit. I only watch the local news to see the weather forecast and get the highlights anyway. After that, the news landscape is a wasteland. It doesn’t deserve a half hour of my time anymore.
Click.
