Without imagining there was a way to answer the question, I was wondering aloud whether we had changed or the program had? The other DrC found their look-back-at-the-decade, final Friday of December, 1989, program online and we rewatched it last night.
The answer really pleases us, we still enjoyed the program as it once was. What has changed is the gruesome debasing of latter-day journalism.
That fine 1989 panel, moderated by Paul Duke, had a young Tom Friedman (New York Times), Haynes Johnson (Washington Post), Alan Murray (Wall Street Journal), and Charles McDowell (Richmond Times-Dispatch) as panelists. Believe it or not, watching them you aren't at all clear which political party each favored.
That was real journalism, with no attempt to sell one party's slant on the news. What you get today in a journo-list world is left-wing advocacy; it's a damn shame. Check it out for yourself, see if I'm not right.
