Poynter: Clay Shirky on the Nostalgia for Journalistic Centrism

Why is there no longer a consensus understanding of which journalistic organizations are reliable sources for ‘the truth’?

“There’s no way to get Cronkite-like consensus without someone like Cronkite, and there’s no way to get someone like Cronkite in a world with an Internet; there will be no more men like him, because there will be no more jobs like his. To assume that this situation can be reversed, and everyone else will voluntarily sign on to the beliefs of some culturally dominant group, is a fantasy. To assume that they should, or at least that they should hold their tongue when they don’t, is Napoleonic in its self-regard. Yet this is what the people who long for the clarity of the old days are longing for.”

In other words, the 20th Century is really over. Read the rest of this remarkable essay at Poynter.org.

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