Alessandra Stanley Now Pissing Us Off With Both Fact and Opinion
Believe us, we take no pleasure in pointing out the frequent errors committed by Alessandra Stanley. It is, at this point, a heavy burden from which we wish we could be unyoked. Today, however, is a special day in our Alessandra coverage: We're taking issues not so much with her factual record, but with some of the opinions she asserts. We refer specifically to her analysis of TV news, a piece based around a review of "Walter Cronkite: Witness to History," a documentary about the legendary CBS anchor. We have no particular brief for Uncle Walt; we never saw him broadcast and, quite frankly, frequently confuse him with Captain Kangaroo. But Stanley's oddly antagonistic piece sits uneasily with us, not least because if Stanley's thesis that the Cronkite brand of cultural authority is no longer relevant, why the fuck would we bother to read an analysis of it an a dead-tree organ like The Times?
Beyond that, there's the already tired appeal to technology ("Americans get their information all over the place, from Comedy Central's "Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and ESPN to the BBC and the Russian newscast "Novosti," and they can download it to cellphones and iPods") There's the stating-the-obvious fact that, you know, television exists ("News briefs are shorter than ever, but weightier reports are still featured on network news and on specials. ABC's "Nightline" is hanging on even without Ted Koppel. For every inane segment on "Dateline" or plodding thumb-sucker on PBS, there is a smart, innovative documentary elsewhere."). And then there's the very weird assertion that Cronkite's reputation for his coverage of the Kennedy assassination is unmerited ("He informed and consoled the nation with stoic grace, but it's hard to imagine that anyone in that chair, at that moment, wouldn't have been just as memorable simply because he was there."), which would explain why you can't turn around without seeing a documentary about Chet Huntley or Ron Cochran, who were also anchors at the time.
Finally, there's this gem: "It's just that modern viewers are more discerning about an anchor's limits. However inured we have grown to anchors personalizing the news Edward R. Murrow-style — posturing on location and occasionally letting their emotions gush like Dan Rather or CNN's Anderson Cooper — viewers expect anchors at least to feign objectivity," which goes a long way toward showing why Fox News does so poorly in the ratings.
We're not sure how much more discerning viewers today are about an anchor's limits, but we do have a sense that they're a bit more discerning about a critic's.
And that's the way it is.
