US news – entertainment company?

The sad tendency is that US news is turning into the entertainment industry, said media consultant Joel Silberman.

“I think the problem is that more than anything else, we don’t value our journalists any more in the same way that we used to in broadcast,” Silberman told RT. “There was a time when you had to justify your FCC license by providing news as part of your community responsibility, and that is how you renewed your license. When the FCC was gutted in the 1980s under the Regan administration and its power was lost, all of a sudden US news became part of the entertainment industry.”

The American non-profit organization Media Matters recently named Fox News host Glenn Beck “Misinformer of the Year” for 2009. The organization accused Beck of inaccurate reporting and using his channel to organize conservatives against President Obama.