“The thing that people forget is that with all this news coming out — more and more words, more and more information — there has to be a trusted source from which this comes. We’ve spent years developing that trust, and even though people may not sit and watch all these nightly news programs the they used to, they still want to have that source they can trust. They want to be able to say, ‘Oh my God, well, this came from PBS or NBC, or fill in the blank, and that means this is something I need to pay attention to on the fact part of it. […] I mean, there’s plenty of stuff out there on opinions and analysis and what people think about things. But the basic facts are another matter. People hear something on the radio or read it in a blog, but they still want to know what the hell the basic facts of the matter are. And that’s the purpose, I believe, that the “Newshour’ serves.”
Jim Lehrer quoted in Jim Lehrer on his last turn at PBS anchor desk tonight, Baltimore Sun, June 3, 2011
There has to be a trusted source
