Posted on 10/23/2009 12:56:14 PM PDT by abb
Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather urged American news consumers Thursday to take action to address the declining state of the journalism industry.
More than 750 Austinites, including students, professors and journalists, attended the fifth annual Mary Alice Davis Distinguished Lecture in the Union Ballroom to hear Rather reflect on his more than 60 years as a journalist, including 24 years with CBS Evening News as an anchor and managing editor.
“When we speak of the future of journalism, let us fully understand that quality journalism of integrity is currently in decline and in peril,” Rather said. He cited corporatization, politicization and trivialization of the news as the major reasons for the decline.
Rather referred to the press as “the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.”
“Press serves as a reminder of the constitutional protections and responsibilities of journalism in our democratic republic,” Rather said. “It was not for nothing that this nation’s founding fathers placed freedom of the press right alongside freedom of speech and freedom of religion in the very First Amendment of the Constitution up at the top of the Bill of Rights.”
Rather identified the main issues of the industry as media conglomeration, changing technologies that affect how news is presented and Americans’ perception of journalism.
He also said that with the growth of the Internet, the industry faces technological changes in the presentation of news. It will likely become a greater source of news than it is now and may even become the dominant source, he said.
“Is there really any reason we should care if newspapers survive, either in hard copy form, online form or both?” Rather asked. “The little discussed truth is that newspapers form the very foundation of the news pyramid. And newspapers continue to drive the news agenda in all media.”
“If [a story] doesn’t appear in a newspaper, the odds of it ever finding its way to a [broadcast] program are fairly long. Without newspapers to provide the original reporting, what do you link to?”
The lecture series is named in honor of former Austin American-Statesman editorial writer Mary Alice Davis, who died of ovarian cancer in 2004.
“Journalism continues to weather its profound changes as it transits into its digital future,” said Tracy Dahlby, director of the School of Journalism. “Rather has spent six decades getting the job done, telling people things they need to know about their world they otherwise wouldn’t. He’s done it with courage, style, wit and occasionally the controversy that [often] comes [with being a] journalist.”
Rather has covered the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. He retired in 2005 after controversy erupted around a report questioning President George W. Bush’s service in the National Guard. The authenticity of the documents Rather based his report on was later debated.
Clinical journalism professor Wanda Cash encouraged her students to attend the lecture because Rather provides excellent context for what journalists do, she said.
“He wanted to be true so deeply that he may have forgotten the most important part of the journalistic creed: verification,” Cash said about the documents.
Rather was also criticized during his career for expressing liberal bias when reporting.
Austinite Kenneth Hiller, who graduated from UT in 1980 with a bachelor’s in journalism, said Rather is the world’s best journalist, despite accusations of liberal bias.
“Anyone in the media who doesn’t go along with the governmental line automatically gets called a liberal, especially if a Republican president is in office,” Hiller said. “With Rather, that started with Nixon and Watergate. He was just being a good journalist.”
ping
Says one of the guys who was at the wheel when the bus went over the cliff ..
Yo, Dan ... STFU
This from the guy who fabricated a story in order to take out a sitting President. It was the closest our nation came to a coup d'etat. The man is mentally ill and a poster boy for the Left.
I must have entered another dimension; wasn't Rather the one who...oh, forget it. It means nothing anyway..
LOL!
Doesn't anyone recall the basis of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Simple stuff, unless yow have a mind full of mush, These days, a would-be journalist would get a better understanding of his/her craft by working at low wages for a supermarket rag (there's a hood one in my back yard) than to spend $25,000 a year, give or take, to hear anti-First Amendment lectures from clueless professors in the Columbia Journalism School.
Congressman Billybob
Doesn't anyone recall the basis of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Simple stuff, unless yow have a mind full of mush, These days, a would-be journalist would get a better understanding of his/her craft by working at low wages for a supermarket rag (there's a hood one in my back yard) than to spend $25,000 a year, give or take, to hear anti-First Amendment lectures from clueless professors in the Columbia Journalism School.
Congressman Billybob
“Press serves as a reminder of the constitutional protections and responsibilities of journalism in our democratic republic,” Rather said. “It was not for nothing that this nation’s founding fathers placed freedom of the press right alongside freedom of speech and freedom of religion in the very First Amendment of the Constitution up at the top of the Bill of Rights.”
Nothing chaps me more than a liar and a sycophant like Rather waxing poetic about the founders and the Constitution, about the very rights he would as soon see taken away from us in support of his unAmerican Idol!
Go suck a rotten egg, you traitor!
“Press serves as a reminder of the constitutional protections”
Ha!
Jefferson was wrong. The free press can be an enemy of freedom as easily as anything else.
Looks like Courier 10 point type to me...
You’ve got a keen eye, abb.
:)
I had my fill of Dan Rather in 1972.
At the Dem convention, cub reporter Dan was running around, trying to find a story. Several times, he breathlessly approached the news desk to tell them he was chasing the news-breaker of the convention. Cub reporter Dan was so hoping Teddy K would announce that we would accept the nomination, if it were offered.
Poor little cub reporter Dan ran his little legs off, between the news desk and the Kennedy group. Back and forth, back and forth, for days.
Alas, no announcement from the Kennedy team. Poor little cub reporter Dan didn’t get the story of the century.
[Am holding back tears, looking for a tissue, eyes too blurred to type any more.]
LOL!
Lord, he was the recipient of whatever the name of the annual “get somebody famous down here” journalism award was back when I was at the UT College of Communications. The next year, Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) got it. Go figure...
Colonel, USAFR
Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather urged American news consumers Thursday to take action to address the declining state of the journalism industry.Oh, Man! You can't make this stuff up...
Did Dan Rather take any questions from the intrepid from the Junior JimBob Reporterettes? I’m still wondering ‘what’s the frequency’!
Dan would rather be paid as a movie star than a journalist.
Doesn't anyone recall the basis of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how.With all due respect, I disagree.
Exactly - you hit the nail on the head with rehab. We “ain’t” taking the “bait” Dan.
“Rather identified the main issues of the industry as media conglomeration, changing technologies that affect how news is presented and Americans’ perception of journalism.”
Yes our percetion is the news meda are propagandists and that Rather was a fool trying to smear Bush with bogus documents.
The “journalists” countinue to show they are liars shilling for Hussein.
THIS is the source of all the problems. At some point, "the media" decided that they should "have an agenda" instead of ethics. Things have been downhill ever since. And Cronkite and Rather were two of the main culprits.
To a conclusion. Which was . . . .Bueller, Anyone?
Good grief, art imitating life?
"DON'T DO IT, BUDDY!! YOU'RE TOO YOUNG. HAVE YOUR WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF YOU!!" {~told the umpteenth time...} -Network
LOL!!
It could be so, but sadly, at the moment its feeling a tingle go up its leg.
That outfit's about as prestigious as the Nobel Peace Prize anymore.
If other words a few lefty Profs sent their classes to this and they were joined by a few fellow leftist journalists.
750 people came to see this disgrace? I hope they got in free.
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