It's an excellent essay that has proved to be prescient. I quote from it during my City University lectures (a new series of which start today, incidentally) because it sums up my own fears about the wayward direction journalism has taken and is taking.
My favourite extract:
"For more than fifteen years we have been moving away from real journalism toward the creation of a sleazoid info-tainment culture in which the lines between Oprah and Phil and Geraldo and Diane and even Ted, between
the New York Post and Newsday, are too often indistinguishable.In this new culture of journalistic titillation, we teach our readers and our viewers that the trivial is significant, that the lurid and the loopy are more important than real news. We do not serve our readers and viewers, we pander to them."
Remember, he wrote that in 1992. You'll find Bernstein's piece in pdf form here on his own website. I can't locate it on The New Republic website.
