I’ll tell you up front that this will be one of those “when I got into the tv news business” stories.  If that’s a problem for you, too bad.

When I got into the business of television news reporting,  which at the time was generally regarded as a legitimate form of Journalism, it was understood that anyone who knowingly manufactured information  was out on his or her ass.   The same, but to a lesser degree, went for any reporter who failed to corroborate information before putting it on the air.   You might not be fired for it, but at the very least there would be serious consequences for dragging the validity of an entire news organization into question.

Standards for the reporting of news on television and radio were taken  very seriously.   We were upholding the public trust, on both the local and national levels.  If we lost that, we lost everything.

It’s fascinating that we are now in a time when there are high-profile apologists for both Brian Williams and more recently, Sabrina Rubin Erdely of Rolling Stone.

No need to wonder why the news biz has lost its credibility.

Who are you gonna believe?