Posted on 04/30/2005 8:55:04 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Hugh Hewitt has posted a challenge to bloggers and others to offer up suggestions on how CBS can pull itself -- and by extension the other dying dinosaurs of the Old Media -- out of its likely fatal ratings spiral.
In order to solve a problem, of course, one must first understand what the nature of that problem is. At CBS and the rest of the Old Media the problem is not one of cosmetics but rather one of philosophy and therefore it is not something that can be quickly fixed with a new set or by promoting of the next leftist in line nor the one with the nicest hair.
The problem isn't the "look" it's the leftism.
The bottomline that CBS (et al) must come to recognize is that leftism is such an intellectually and morally vacuous philosophy that it can only survive in, well, a vacuum. For nearly half-a-century the leftists at the elite media enjoyed such a vacuum in the monopoly they held on the dissemination of information.
Because the two (and then three) networks all shared the same leftist philosophy they were able to profit (with few slicing up the large pie) while selling not fact and evidence but ideology and ensuring that that ideology was never challenged by parroting each other and the elitists in the print media.
The elitists were able to con themselves into believing that, because their product was "truth" and, being the intellectual superiors of the toothless hordes, rednecks and yahoos who dare to live outside the approved zip codes starting with a nine or a one, that "truth" was whatever their own leftist interpretation and conclusions dictated.
If someone was so stupid as to believe, for example, that the Vietnam War was a noble effort to staunch the spread of Communism it was the leftist elitists at the Old Media's job to get them to see "the truth" no matter how much misinformation and disinformation that required. In nicer words the Old Media saw their job as being not to inform but to persuade.
Thus the Old Media had no problem portraying the Tet Offensive -- a fabulous victory for the American troops -- as a backbreaking defeat for such a portrayal, while an outright lie, was needed to make the yokels and idiots outside of the Upper East Side of Manhattan see "the greater truth."
This is, of course, what Dan Rather attempted in what may well have been the final breath of the Old Media when he attempted to sell forged documents and portray a mentally disturbed Democratic Party partisan with multiple contacts with the highest levels of the Kerry campaign as "an unimpeachable source." Even after being caught red-handed Rather, so steeped in the old world of network news, implored his viewers to ignore the evidence and simply get "the truth" that George Bush is a bad man who must be defeated.
What Rather, in his arrogance and leftist bubble didn't recognize -- but what CBS and the Old Media must if they are to survive -- is that this isn't the 1970's and the spoken or unspoken collusion between a handful of media outlets is no longer viable.
With the advent of alternative voices it is no longer possible for the leftists to sell misinformation and disinformation, secure in the knowledge that the other networks share their ideology and agendas. Try as they might, for example, in the twenty-first century these sources could not convince the American people that the war that liberated Iraq was a "Vietnam-like quagmire" now that these same viewers could turn on the Fox News Channel and see American troops in Baghdad in what was historically unprecedented swiftness.
It is not a coincidence that the last bastions of leftist-driven "news" are those outlets where the anchor or the writer simply dictates "the truth" unchallenged by in-studio guests or their readers/viewers. That is, in every venue where debate and discussion is part of the format the leftists are quickly debunked.
So it is that the last gasp of leftist controlled media includes the twenty-three minute a night network newscasts where the likes of Dan Rather and Peter Jennings would dictate "the truth" to viewers without interruption or counterpoint. This same ideology espoused on the cable news channels, though, with their hour-long debate and discussion formats sees the consumer of news turning off CNN and switching over to the more reasonable and reasoned Fox News Channel.
Similarly the leftists continue their hold on the print media where the likes of the New York Times puts down on paper whatever their politically motivated agenda demands and, as if gospel, "it is written" but when these same arguments are put forth on talk radio where they must be defended against twenty or thirty challenges by intelligent and engaged listeners the leftist talk show host is quickly debunked and rejected.
There are, then, three basic assumptions that the Old Media has lived by for close to half-a-century and will die by if they do not reconsider immediately. First, the consumer of news has alternatives that didn't exist as recently as ten years ago (notice that the three outlets the leftists object to, Fox News, center-right talk radio and the blogesphere didn't exist a decade ago) thus, no longer being a monopoly they need to provide the consumer with what they seek -- facts and evidence -- and not ideology.
Second they must come to recognize that the ideology they espouse is one that cannot -- never has -- survive in a competitive market place. Whether it was the leftism of the Soviet Union, the failures of our leftist run public schools or now the near total defeat of the Old Media leftism can only survive in a vacuum -- and that vacuum is now gone and will never return.
Third, they must reject their self-serving self-image as the "elite" and their consumers as stupid, rednecked yahoos. No company (except monopolies) has ever survived when they hold their consumers in contempt. Besides, who is really the stupid one? The people who cling to the misinformation and disinformation of corrupt news outlets like the forged document using CBS and the fraudulent liars of CNN who were in bed with Saddam Hussein for upwards of a decade or those now reject those outlets after recognizing that Iraq isn't a "Vietnam-like quagmire" and the streets there aren't "so chaotic" as to make elections impossible?
Is there a particular format I have in mind for CBS? I'll leave that to the marketing department. But unless CBS and the Old Media includes a host whose positions can be defended against challenge and the opportunity for such challenge via in-studio guests and/or viewer calls CBS is doomed to the same fate as the Soviet Union, our public schools and AirAmerica.
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