Roger Mudd was CBS's Washingtoin correspondent for two decades, covering some monumental stories in American history, including Watergate and the Vietnam war. In a speech featured on Word for Word, Roger Mudd tells the story of his first big break, reporting on the March on Washington in 1963. There he was, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when a quarter of a million people gathered before him:
" ... and i didn't feel well. I began to breathe deeply, and that didn't help, and I was chewing tums, sipping coke -- nothing helped, and so I went down behind the boxwood at the Lincoln Memorial and I threw up."
How much has technology changed news stories we're exposed to and the way you consume news? What kinds of news stories would you like to see more of? Is Roger Mudd right -- were the 1960s and 70s the "glory days" of news?
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Larissa Anderson
Producer, Word for Word
MPR | APM
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Comments: 5
I miss the days of Walter Cronkite and his unbiased CBS Evening News. Even though Cronkite was a Liberal, he didn't let his own feelings get in the way. That's why he was admired by Conservatives and Liberals alike.
I ended up not going into it as a career (went into freelance writing and e-commerce instead), but it's interesting how many people out there take the news at face value. You have to be careful about that because of how consolidated media companies are now and the tendency for some bias to occur. For example one small error can occur in a report, but so many forms of media are connected that you'll hear it from a dozen sources and tend to think it's true unless it's corrected. That's a little dangerous.
Another thing that bugs me is when reporters take on the role as an "expert" in talking about things like money, economics, politics, etc. when they may have only been covering the topic with less than 24 hours to prepare. It's like Linda G. in the comment above said in that a lot of it is commentary more than reporting. I bet real experts are shaking their heads at a lot of it.