Ted Koppel: The news industry is a disaster

On April 12 Pew Research released a report concerning the news industry and how the executives in the industry look to the future of news. The over all impression of the report isn’t all that encouraging:

But the leaders of America’s newsrooms are nonetheless worried about the future. Fewer than half of all those surveyed are confident their operations will survive another 10 years — absent significant new sources of revenue. Nearly a third believe their operations are at risk in just five years or less. And many blame the problems not on the inevitable effect of technology but on their industry’s missed opportunities.

Ted Koppel in an interview at the BBC following the report wasn’t so kind

In response to a question from anchor Katty Kay about a new Pew Research survey — in which 64 percent of broadcast news executives believe the biz is heading in the wrong direction — Koppel said, “I think it’s even worse. I think it’s a disaster.”

“I think we’re living through the — I hope — the final stages of what I like to call the age of entitlement…We now feel entitled not to have the news that we need but the news that we want. We want to listen to news that comes from those who already sympathize with our particular point of view. We don’t want the facts any more.”