TV News as a Consumer Product

I was asked by several people to post this here, it's a conglomeration or maybe distillation of several posts I made in another thread, but it turns out it seems to belong here.
It seems a couple of folks mentioned Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, and while not everyone liked them, a few said that they were "real journalists". TV news was still second banana to newspapers back then.
It's different now.

Television news back then was governed under two agreements, one of which was the law.
The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to allow time for reasonable opposing viewpoints on a story if the report took a slanted or partial view, thus reporters, editors and anchors went to great lengths to present news in an unbiased, objective and impartial manner, and editorials were clearly labeled as such.

The other agreement was not law but, due to the Fairness Doctrine, networks and stations had a gentleman's agreement to allow their news departments to be loss leaders, maybe turning a tiny profit from time to time, mostly breaking even, and sometimes losing a small amount, but networks and stations generally operated their news departments as a nonprofit public service.

Cronkite came to speak at my university in 1981, shortly before he decided to retire. He made it clear that television journalism was about to undergo a drastic change, and that most would be unprepared for the sea change.
It didn't quite sink in at the time but he intimated that the future trends treated television news more like a retail consumer product, and that he was not willing to deal with a change of that nature.
The official story is that "CBS had a policy of mandatory retirement by age 65", but I assure you, that's utter NONSENSE.
With the kind of ratings that man had, he could have continued on the air till age 139 if he'd wanted to.

Today what he confided to our class makes absolute sense. Television news IS INDEED a "for profit consumer product" and therefore it is important to understand that it's not that the news media LIES, it's that the news media creates the kind of product that their research says their audience WANTS to see and hear, because if they do not, the audience will seek it elsewhere, and the news department will not post a profit and will not generate the necessary RATINGS NEEDED to post a profit.
With the removal of The Fairness Doctrine, it was no longer necessary, or even possible, for stations and networks to maintain impartiality and objectivity. If another network created stories that attracted more audience, the competition had to do the same.

The upshot is, if you WANT your hard news to be accurate, impartial, objective and presented in a fair and balanced manner, YOU MUST REMOVE the PROFIT MOTIVE and the news must be treated as a public service.
Networks can program PRIME TIME AND DAYTIME with profitable shows any time they choose to in order to make up for the piddling little costs of a news department, and they can also sell the news on the PRESTIGE that they carry by being TRUSTED by the public.

And that is WHY Walter Cronkite was regarded as "The most trusted man in America".
News as a public service, governed by The Fairness Doctrine makes it EASY for a man like Cronkite to be trustworthy.
He said so himself many times.
I am also quite certain that Murrow would agree.