Journalism’s State as Chaotic as the Big Bang, Says Brokaw

Published: October 2, 2009

During his visit to the campus as a Poynter Fellow, renowned NBC newsman Tom Brokaw met with student journalists and gave a public address on “The Future of Journalism.” He urged his audience to be wary about where it gets its news.

New Haven, Conn. — With news and information now available any time of the day or night from sources ranging from cable channels to Internet blogs, the world of journalism has changed momentously since famed NBC journalist Tom Brokaw sat as a transfixed, news-junkie teenager before a television in the living room of his rural South Dakota home.

In those days, there were only "two news planets in the sky" — the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" on NBC and the "CBS Evening News" with Walter Cronkite — and dinnertime was when families learned what happened in the world on any given day, Brokaw told his audience during a Poynter Fellowship in Journalism Lecture he delivered on campus on Sept. 22.

Today, the ways in which people access news and information are evolving at such a feverish pace that Brokaw likens the changes to "the second Big Bang," he told an overflow crowd in Whitney Humanities Center auditorium. The newsman ran through a long list of just some of these options — from television news channels for all-day public policy discussions, sports or financial updates to the Internet to public radio.

"To be sure, the world in which we now live and this universe of information are in considerable chaos," he said. "There are planets out there colliding with one another, trying to determine which one will support life."

Brokaw's address on "The Future of Journalism" focused on the question of whether the public, and journalism itself, is better served by the news "universe" he knew as a young man or the "meteor shower" of information we now have today.

He concluded that there are more benefits to the current news environment — so long as media consumers are "vigilant" and critical.

"Just because a statement lands on your laptop or PDA or website does not make that statement true," Brokaw warned his audience.

"Remember this: Bloggers are not journalists," he said. "They're freelance commentators unrestrained by the facts or editorial content or integrity. Moreover, most have a personal agenda to advance or a personal grudge to exploit."

"I am a free-speech advocate," he commented, adding: "We are a land of many voices and minds, and more need to be heard. But we do have a common obligation to measure and examine what [producers of news] are saying and not just take it in."

While he said that today's media consumers are "empowered as never before to explore and satisfy daily needs and curiosities," he remarked that they must be wary of what they hear or see in this more complex universe of information.

"The new order has a voracious appetite for something — too often anything — to just fill the time," Brokaw said of modern producers of news. "That can only be described as mob journalism ... It is seldom reporting in the classic sense."

Brokaw described the world of professional journalism as being on "life support" as it contends with increased competition, economic hardships and other challenges. However, he told his audience that in recent years he has observed numerous examples of journalistic excellence, among them investigative pieces on the Bush administration's policies on torture; a series on global warming in the Arctic and Antarctica and another on the abuse of methamphetamines in rural America; and an examination of the mind of an arsonist.

Brokaw served for 21 years as the anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" and is now a special correspondent for the program. He acknowledged that his role models and mentors during his early career were all "white, middle-aged men from the Eastern seaboard." Although he said that they were "professionals of unquestionable integrity and intelligence," their views "understandably reflected the sensibilities of their time and place." Thus, in his early career, many important issues or cultural phenomena of the time, including gender inequality, advances in the health sciences and events in Asia, did not get the attention they might have deserved, Brokaw said.

He added that the attitude that many journalists of the past had toward their readers and viewers was "We talk and you listen or we print and you read."

Brokaw emphasized the importance of engaging citizens in the culture of journalism which, he said, "has been as important to this unique society as the rule of law." Without the transformative effect of journalism, Brokaw explained, Americans would not have supported their country's cause in World War II or come to understand the need to address racial inequalities brought to light during the civil rights movement or known the significance of Watergate, among many other issues in the nation's history.

However, Brokaw told the student members of his audience that access to news and information in our era of rapid technological advances cannot solve the problems of the world.

"You will not solve global climate change by hitting ‘backspace,'" he said. "You will not solve Third World poverty by hitting ‘delete.' ... These new instruments of communication, research, commerce and information are transformational tools that require your heart and your mind as well as your fingers on the keyboard. They are carriers of information and news, but they do not originate from those critical components of dialog and decision-making among free people."

While Brokaw acknowledged that it is impossible to predict the future of his profession, he said that there is one thing he has learned during his nearly 50-year career that has endured through time.

"People take us [journalists] seriously and we fulfill our obligation to them and our place when we return the favor."

— By Susan Gonzalez

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