Welcome to the Saturday edition of The Conversation U.S.’s Daily newsletter. Last night, CBS News Radio went dark after nearly 100 years on the air. The shuttering of the venerable media institution speaks to just how much the information landscape has changed in the internet age. Audience fragmentation and more news sources are not, on their face, a dangerous development. But when coupled with deregulation, corporate consolidation and the weakening of public interest requirements, these shifts don’t bode well for democratic deliberation and civic life, writes Penn State media scholar Matthew Jordan. In his article about how CBS evolved from an avatar of Fourth Estate idealism to a conglomerate that has grown increasingly cozy with the Trump administration, Jordan returns to a speech Edward Murrow gave to the Radio Television News Directors Association in 1958. The longtime CBS broadcaster warned that radio and television was foregoing its duty “to operate in the public interest.” He worried that “we have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information” and saw mass media increasingly “being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us.” “The tube is flickering,” he added. And unless Americans reclaim their right to information not colored by profit motive and special interests, “we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.” This week we also liked stories on the cultural influence of how people map numbers in their head, how companies are hyping AI in a similar way to greenwashing, and what Madison and Jefferson thought about the separation of church and state. Did somebody forward this email to you? Subscribe to our daily and weekly newsletters here. |
