Though his career began in radio, it achieved its fulfillment via television it seems fair to say that his journalistic skills were actuated by, and never separable from, the medium and moment of TV performance. Wallace was right there in the middle of all of this-both an avatar of change and a significant contributor to it. We know the road from there: the rise of the internet and social media mass attrition in the newspaper industry increasing corporate pressure on the bottom line the attenuation both of news cycles and consumer attention span the toxic discourse of talk radio steadily shrinking room for the very idea of mid-twentieth century journalistic objectivity fiery partisanship and the emergence of advocacy journalism, and of the journalist herself as ideological gladiator. Bolstered by the political drama of Watergate, journalists enjoyed an extended moment of high repute. Israeli director Avi Belkin reaches back to a time-it seems so long ago-when citizens not only trusted individual journalists, but invested the profession with a kind of collective public faith. Could there be a more timely documentary about journalism, in our era of fake news, warring cable-news shows, and a president who routinely reviles the press as “the enemy of the people,” than one chronicling the rise of 60 Minutes and its star Mike Wallace?
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