Ted Koppel weighs in on Keith Olbermann, Bill O'Reilly and their ilk hastening the death of real news.
The collection and dissemination of substantial and unbiased news used to be a public trust, now journalists are avowedly, unabashedly and monotonously partisan. Maddow, Matthews, Beck, Hannity are encouraged by their mothership parent organization to hug one or the other partisanship pillar and shrill to the heavens - such commentary is profitable.
Rewarding viewers with opinions designed to confirm their own biases feeds into a growing trend of personal entitlement and corporate financial gain.
We should be reminded of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's fabled observation, "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts" - in our present reality opinions are flaunted as though they were facts.
News we can use has become news we can chose. Abandoning the unattainable - absolute objectivity - has given way to a free-for-all. This is to journalism as Madoff was to investment, he told clients what they preferred to hear, by the time they learned the truth their money was gone.
Idealized reality.
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