TeMPOraL 9 hours ago

And on the grasping hand, one could think they were right - so instead of defending social media by pointing at the past and saying it's "just the same doom and gloom reaction to more communication, it will pass", or - conversely - instead of claiming social media is a new and uniquely bad thing, we could perhaps consider that their observations were valid then, and are even more valid now; that we've been going down the wrong road for the past 100+ years, and social media is merely an incremental worsening of a mistake made so long ago, we can't even conceptualize correcting it now.

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bryanlarsen 7 hours ago

But it wasn't continuously bad, or at least that's the impression I get. Yellow journalism reached it's heyday in the 1890's but started turning things around towards respectability in the 1900's.

amanaplanacanal 5 hours ago

And then returned in the 1990's with the 24 hour news networks.

conception 5 hours ago

More the removal of the fairness doctrine.

maroonblazer 3 hours ago

I don't think this gets mentioned enough. Rush Limbaugh was the result of the doctrine's abolition. You can draw a straight line from Limbaugh to Fox News, et al.