America’s cult of the newscaster-hero has swallowed itself

‘A game! Spot the odd one out in the following story. This year has been a terrible one so far for those who care about American journalism: the much-loved New York Times journalist David Carr died suddenly on 12 February; CBS correspondent Bob Simon was killed in a car crash the day before; Jon Stewart, famously the “leading news source for young Americans”, announced that he is quitting the Daily Show; his colleague Stephen Colbert is moving over from news satire to the softer arena of a nightly talk show; NBC anchor Brian Williams, as famous in America as Jeremy Paxman is in Britain, has been suspended after it was revealed he had “misremembered” events involving himself while covering the war in Iraq; Bill O’Reilly, an anchor on Fox News, the most watched cable news channel in the US, has been accused of being on similarly vague terms with the truth.
News of the Fox News anchor probably sounds like “dog bites man” to most Britons, who remember that this network recently described Birmingham as a no-go area for non-Muslims. But this latest scandal involving O’Reilly reveals something quite telling about journalism in America.’

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