Posted on 11/16/2003 11:57:57 PM PST by RonDog
Dan Rather Has Learned to Resist
In the past 21/2 years my path has twice crossed that of Dan Rather, the CBS anchor who has long represented the best of professional journalism for me. Both times he was in Southern California to accept well-deserved awards. Both times a handful of pickets were nearby claiming Mr. Rather's reporting was biased.
The first time, June 9, 2001, Mr. Rather received a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles Press Club, of which I was then executive director as well as producer of the dinner, and where the honor was graciously presented by CBS's Leslie Moonves.
I never met the picketers that night. They were cordoned half a mile away by security. I did get to share a laugh with Mr. Rather, who said being picketed was a first for him.
It happened the second time last week at the Museum of Television & Radio's annual gala in Beverly Hills, Calif. A handful of people, some in costumes, waved placards at the hotel entrance.
I asked Mr. Rather about it. "Part of being a journalist," he said, "and trying to be a journalist who pulls no punches and plays no favorites, who tries to be accurate and fair and who knows you are going to make your mistakes, is sometimes you have to face the furnace and take the heat."
Mr. Rather, who turned 72 on Halloween, has taken the heat throughout his world-class career. "CBS Evening News" may be in third place but his standards remain first rank. That he is among the best but not the most-watched reminded me of his remarks before the Press Club: "We take some slight encouragement from the evidence, faint as it may be, that there may be some good fight to be fought against the growing proliferation of soft news, news you can use, celebrity news and all the other market-tested filler that is increasingly crowding out a shrinking news hole."
Inspired to do my job as a reporter, I walked down the winding driveway at the Pink Palace (a k a The Beverly Hills Hotel). The protesters couldn't have been friendlier. They were hungry for publicity. A tall lady swathed in white and holding a makeshift scale of justice, with a tiny girl cowering behind her skirt, told me her name was Cinnamon Girl.
I learned there were 10 of them and they were connected by a conservative Internet news site called Free Republic. The protest was organized by Gary Metz, president of the Orange County chapter of Free Republic, and Ron Smith, vice president of the group's L.A. chapter. It was the group's second protest aimed at Mr. Rather. The other one was at the L.A. Press Club awards.
As Mr. Metz spoke, Mr. Smith poked a Kleenex at drops of blood on his face from cuts inflicted by an oversize Saddam Hussein mask he was wearing.
"We can't let the Left have all the fun," Mr. Metz said. "You see all the guys from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have this kind of fun and street theater. We like to get some attention too. We figure this is a good way."
I asked Mr. Metz if he watched Mr. Rather on TV. "I don't actually watch TV," he told me. "The Internet and talk radio are better sources of information."
Do you have a TV, I asked? "I've had a set at home for a long time," Mr. Metz responded. "But I don't turn it on."
When was the last time? "I haven't had mine on for maybe four years," he told me.
"Television has its uses," Mr. Metz added. "Me personally, I'm like an alcoholic. If I get started, I'll watch it all the time, and it's just a bad thing for me. Especially TV news. It's too emotional."
He then told me you can't believe anything you hear on the network news in any case. He said he learned that on talk radio, from Dennis Prager: "If you have to stop one thing in your life, he says, stop television news."
The next morning, I called Mr. Prager and reached him at an airport in the Midwest, where he was on a book tour. "It's good you checked with me," he said, "because I have never said, 'Everything you hear on the news is a lie.'"
Mr. Prager told me he does believe CBS, NBC and ABC all have a liberal slant and that he had criticized Mr. Rather for his interview with Saddam Hussein: "I thought he prostituted himself by asking serious questions of a tyrant."
"If [Mr. Metz] had said, 'Dennis Prager says it's a waste of time to watch the evening news,'" said Mr. Prager, "he would be right."
Then you don't respect Mr. Rather, I asked? "How can I comment?" answered Mr. Prager. "I haven't watched TV news in 35 years. It relies too much on the visual. Most of what is important in the world is not on video."
Stunned by that revelation, I soon learned the Free Republicans were abuzz about the event and my interest. In addition to some e-mail, I got a call from Matthew Sheffield, 25, an unemployed student in Virginia. He and his brother Greg, 22, operate the Web site Rather Biased, which began around the time of the Clinton impeachment. They focused on Mr. Rather, said Mr. Sheffield, who they felt "carried his [opinions] over into his reporting."
Mr. Sheffield told me he considered Fox News Channel biased as well, but to the right. "We're equal-opportunity," he explained.
I asked if he ever tried to contact Mr. Rather. Mr. Sheffield said no, although he did talk to someone at CBS once. "I really haven't thought of that," he added. "I would interview Dan Rather [for the Web site] any day of the week if he would have an honest dialogue about bias. He hates talking about it. If he had a real honest dialogue, we'd probably go away. That's all we want. We all want our voices to be heard."
I was left saddened that Mr. Rather and CBS News might be hurt and the public might be misled by these silly, noisy, publicity-hungry protesters, some of whom don't even watch TV. What a contrast with a dedicated, hard-working journalist like Mr. Rather, who has spent his life serving the public and his profession.
Stranger Than Fiction
After the dinner in Beverly Hills I had a moment more with Mr. Rather. I told him the protesters were the same ones from the Press Club dinner. And the leader hadn't watched TV in four years.
He laughed and said: "You couldn't make that up."
As he walked away, I remembered something Mr. Rather told me earlier in the evening about how journalists should act when attacked for doing their job: "Democratic, Republican, independent, Muslim, they all try to do it," said Mr. Rather with a shrug. "It's our job to resist it the best we can."
No one has done a better job than Dan Rather.#© Copyright 2003 by Crain Communications
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In the days leading up to the Dan's big "get," the liberal media seemed to rally around the anchorman, refusing to acknowledge a potentially damaging first impression: The interview was providing aid and comfort to the enemy, as if Edward R. Murrow would have jumped at interviewing Hitler; it would also provide aid and comfort to the antiwar rabble here and abroad, a political boost to the forces arrayed against Saddam's disarmament. The objections to Rather's interview shouldn't be restricted to that simple formula. Yes, Saddam did use it to project his ridiculous claims on the American people he loves Allah, freedom, and humanity. Yes, it did probably embolden that strange minority who feels Saddam is a put-upon fall guy for American imperialism. Yes, it could be seen as a contributing factor if President Bush's push for war takes a punch in the polls. But this interview actually reflects a trend in American journalism at least as old as the Vietnam War: solicitous, respectful treatment of despotic regimes opposing America. It's not just the dictators themselves, but their mouthpieces as well. They're not spin artists for savage regimes. They're diplomats with gravitas. As with the oily Vladimir Pozners and Alejandro Bendanas before him, Saddam's stooge/spokesman Tariq Aziz has been quite ubiquitous on American television. Catch him on Good Morning America between the celebrity movie plugs. On February 11, Diane Sawyer interviewed Aziz in a very sympathetic tone, asking if he had a gun in his home to protect his family and sounding relieved when he said "yes, of course." (All the better to shoot American invaders.) She added this poor-thing question: "Just before you go to sleep at night, how afraid are you?" The liberal media may suggest this is balance against the gung-ho patriots singing "God Bless America" in D.C., but it's not balance. It's a sick imbalance against democratic institutions, the only institutions under which full-throated freedom of journalistic expression thrives. Instead of demonstrating any respect for that notion, the media elite pound and punish the democratically elected, and politely call dictators like Saddam "Mr. President." So Dan Rather was merely the lucky one, the one who got the historic two-shot and left the toughness in New York. Rather was right when he insisted that almost any reporter would take that interview offer. But wasn't softening it a condition for getting it? It should be said that Rather was not selected because he was tough. Obtaining the second interview ought to prove the first interview was a failure, if toughness was the goal. Reporters love cynically breaking down the way legislation moves or doesn't move through Congress, and love questioning the sincerity and coherence of White House military-diplomatic moves. Few will make an issue of the sausage making at CBS. Media "reporters" like the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz left out nagging details like Rather's help from Ramsey Clark. (Credit AP's David Bauder for reporting Clark put in a "good word" with Saddam even as he leads a campaign to have George W. Bush impeached.) CBS tried to explain, with the embarrassment it deserved, that it had to submit to Iraqi cameras, Iraqi translators, and wait patiently for Iraqi minders to review their tape and send it along. More comical was Rather's story that Saddam's men drove him around Baghdad for two and a half hours before taking him to the interview site. These are clearly not conditions CBS would accept from the president or any other democratically elected leader. Dictators get more respect just because they're dictators, and it's the end of sweeps. When NBC's Tom Brokaw secured special access to the Bush White House for a primetime special next to its fictional West Wing, it drew the usual hoots from reporters who slammed it as a softball platform for Team Bush. But no one in the media establishment is throwing those brickbats at CBS. They all avoid the obvious contrast: whether Dan is too soft on this lie-a-minute despot, compared to Dan roughing up the pols at home. He took pride in sticking it to Nixon as a White House correspondent. How can we forget anchorman Rather roughing up Bush 41 in 1988, angrily sniping about Iran-Contra: "You've made us hypocrites in the face of the world!" By contrast, Rather gave Saddam five minutes or more devoted to his bizarre proposal for a debate with President Bush. Rather called it "surprising" and "new," and CBS plugged it relentlessly. But the tape from August 29, 1990 quickly revealed that CBS reported then that Saddam Hussein was offering to debate George Bush or Margaret Thatcher. This interview wasn't about journalistic integrity, it was about showmanship and self-promotion. In this show, Rather came up short on any moral showboating, a common tactic in American interviews. He asked dispassionately if Saddam agreed with the September 11 attacks. He also asked if Osama bin Laden has made him irrelevant on the "Arab street." Nice career move, killing 3,000 Americans? This, from the man who suggested he had found true evil as he welcomed the Republican Congress in 1995 with sentences like "The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor." Last night, Newt Gingrich must have sputtered as Saddam just spoke his piece about how he loves peace and humanity without any disobedient rebuttal from Dan. The media elite ought to come out of this interview at least asking themselves if they would have been as soft a touch as Rather. Not every question was to Saddam's liking. But a journalist who pictured himself as a toughie would not ask "What's the most important thing you want the American people to understand at this juncture of history?" That's a platform, not a question. I would hope another journalist might care more than Rather did about the reaction of his countrymen, especially the parents who lost sons and daughters to this tyrant twelve years ago. I would hope another journalist would vow to hold Saddam accountable before the free press at every broken phony line he gave me as the war proceeds. Rather couldn't even remember the phony debate line he swallowed last time. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-graham022703.asp
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AHA! It's a vendetta by Block against guys named Jim Robinson!
Congratulations, Mr. Block.And, he was more diligent that ANY of his compatriots in the "news" business.
You are more honest than most journalists who seek to obscure the existence of Free Republic. - L.N. Smithee
Inspired to do my job as a reporter, I walked down the winding driveway at the Pink Palace (a k a The Beverly Hills Hotel). - Alex Ben BlockThere were literally HUNDREDS of people at this "gala dinner" sponsored by the Museum of Television and Radio, and while SOME of them may have been paparazzi whose only reason for attending was to meet Jennifer Aniston, there HAD to have been DOZENS of alleged journalists at this event...
...and they could NOT have missed seeing us. :o)But to his credit as a REAL "reporter" - Alex Ben Block (and ONLY Alex Ben Block) did actually come outside to investigate us.
There may yet be SOME hope for the "mainstream media."
Mr. Rather, who turned 72 on Halloween, has taken the heat throughout his world-class career. "CBS Evening News" may be in third place but his standards remain first rank.O.K., THIS PART kinda frosts me, too. :o)
That he is among the best but not the most-watched reminded me of his remarks before the Press Club:But, Alex has performed a VALUABLE public service HERE, and this may countenance a MULTITUDE of sins. :o)"We take some slight encouragement from the evidence, faint as it may be, that there may be some good fight to be fought against the growing proliferation of soft news, news you can use, celebrity news and all the other market-tested filler that is increasingly crowding out a shrinking news hole."
He has documented Dan Rather's own personal view of his position in the world of journalism. :o)
It looks like we now have a new promo for CBS News:Dan Rather: the "shrinking news hole."
This question left me puzzled. Does Alex Ben Block believe for a second, that Rather cares what conservaties think about him. They are indeed tone deaf to the criticism.
And for the record, I've tried to contact the elites at CBS/ABC/NBC/PBS countless times only to be ignored. No thanks Alex, your charge rings false...
First of all, Dan, the news hole is not shrinking, it's expanding. Anyone who wishes to find it can get endless information through the internet, free from the time pressure of television news to get the story summed up in 45 seconds, and free from the inefficinet ink-stained infobits of your local newspaper.
Not even television news is shrinking. My cable system has eight 24-hour all-news channels offering everything from "Headline News" to local news to news from an international perspective. You can get your news filtered through the left's biases or the right's, Dan. It's a cornucopia of news - to the point of distraction. And I haven't even touched the four major networks or public broadcasting.
As for the fascination with celebrities, "happy talk" and consumer news, it's a sign of the dumbing down of education but which side (left or right) is busy teaching our kids how to put on a condom rather than engage in logical or critical thinking, Dan? That's right - the union-dominated left which indoctrinates then passes on their best to a college or university for more leftist dumbing down. Can't have it both ways, Dan. You can't have the stupid America you want voting for your liberal friends and also have them hunger for hard news that they are barely capable of understanding or contextualizing.
So, by pushing a leftward agenda, Danny Boy, you're succeeding in making your own chosen profession extinct. And in the classical sense of irony upon ironies, you pull down millions in salary for delivering last-place newscasts while getting awards from Hollywood and kudos from your adoring lackeys like Mr. Ben Block.
For someone who doesn't even have the sense to believe that Clinton lied under oath, you've done quite well for yourself, Daniel. Your handlers must be quite proud.
Alex Ben Block should be even more deeply saddened by the slimey trail of leftist bias that has disfigured the face of TV journalism over the decades of Rather's tenure.
This simpering piece of "reportage" by Block is an embarassing example of pure self-serving toadyism.
From the evidence of this article and some of his bio material, this Block guy seems to have a Ph.D in butt-smooching.
Dennis Prager (archive)
(printer-friendly version)March 4, 2003
Dan and Saddam
CBS News constantly referred to Dan Rather's interview with one of the world's cruelest tyrants as a "coup."
A coup? For whom? Was it a coup for the American viewing public? Of course not. Other than the lengths to which Dan Rather went to be obsequious to a tyrant, Americans learned nothing from his interview with Saddam Hussein. Was it a coup for the news profession? Again, no. No news was learned, nor was any likely to be.
No, it was a coup solely for CBS News and Saddam Hussein. That the world of television news (not only CBS) regards it as a major achievement shows the depths to which television news has sunk. Obviously, the industry sees ratings as its reason for being.
The moment it was announced that Dan Rather had secured an audience with Saddam, I suspected (and said so on my radio show) that the only beneficiaries would be Saddam and CBS. The only way it could have been newsworthy is if Rather had asked hard questions.
For example, Rather might have asked the world's most powerful sadist:
Now, of course, few, if any, reporters would have asked Saddam Hussein these questions. (Television reporters tend to restrict tough questioning to democratically elected leaders they don't like.) But if one is not going to ask a dictator anything approaching the truth about his actions, why bother interviewing him? Isn't the whole thing morally compromised and journalistically meaningless?
- You claim to have received 100 percent of the vote in your last "election." Do you think the world believes that in a nation of 24 million people, there aren't 24 people who want another president in Iraq?
- Eight years ago, your two sons-in-law, Hussein Kamil, the former minister of defense, and his brother, defected to Jordan. We are quite certain that they were told that their entire extended families would be murdered if they did not return to Iraq. And when they did return, they were killed and their bodies dragged through the streets of Baghdad. How do your daughters feel about what you did to their husbands?
- Was it you or another Iraqi official who came up with the idea of having the children of suspected dissidents tortured in front of the parents?
- Have you seen any photos of the thousands of Iraqi Kurdish families you ordered gassed?
- Do you regret having invaded Iran and causing the deaths of about one million Iraqis and Iranians?
- How many more hundred-million-dollar palaces do you plan to build for yourself while Iraqi children die of malnutrition?
- Where are the billions of dollars Iraq has been allowed to earn for humanitarian needs?
CLICK HERE for the rest of that article
Stranger Than FictionHa, ha.
After the dinner in Beverly Hills I had a moment more with Mr. Rather. I told him the protesters were the same ones from the Press Club dinner.
And the leader hadn't watched TV in four years.
He laughed and said: "You couldn't make that up."
These guys talk about my not watching television as if it were a character flaw, rather than the reverse.Fortunately, Dennis Prager again says it better than I can...
From his "Think a Second Time" interview on Booknotes - with Brian Lamb:-- snip --LAMB: At one point, you say, "I almost never watch television."
PRAGER: Right.
LAMB: And then you tell us about a fellow named Robert Turner, who is a subscriber to Ultimate Issues, who is with Multimedia Television, who got you a television show.
PRAGER: Yeah.
LAMB: Now what's a man who never watches...
PRAGER: Isn't that a riot?
LAMB: ... television doing on a television show?
PRAGER: I can't think of a funnier thing in TV-land than me having a daily show. They would ask me to have guests who were -- everybody in the studio, all my producers, household names on television, and I had never heard of them because I basically don't watch, except, and I don't want to seem patronizing -- I adore C-SPAN.And I'll tell you the difference, and it's a very important distinction: C-SPAN lets the viewer judge. When TV does that -- I'll give you an example, though it'll obviously slightly politicize things, and I don't really want to, because politics is not my first interest, but I was very angry what was done to Clarence Thomas.
I feel that if you build up a moral account, a bank account in your life, you should be able to rely on it, and to have one person come and say you did something not terribly bad, after all, 10 years earlier and then be humiliated on national television was very upsetting to me.
But the point relating to C-SPAN and TV: When people saw the entire proceedings, then Clarence Thomas was vindicated in most people's eyes.When the media had their year and two years to talk about it, it shifted over to Anita Hill -- shows the power of media translating life for you, as opposed to the people seeing it directly. That's why what you do with the candidates on the road is so valuable. I feel that I get to know them. That's when TV can be good, and The History Channel and The Learning Channel, etc.
But generally speaking, I have one question that I always pose to my radio talk-show audience in Los Angeles, say, "If you were told by a doctor you had a year to live -- one year to live -- do you think you would watch as much television in the next year as you do now?"
And that generally clinches the argument that it's mostly a waste of time...
CLICK HERE for the rest of that interview
I guess that Ray Bradbury must be a kook too since he also has advocated turning off television news (he said this when I saw him nearly 10 years ago) in lieu of papers and magazines.
Dan Rather and this writer shared a laugh that he would garner protestors but it is "big news" that socialists are planning to protest President Bush here and there.
We also hear that RatherBiased.com goes back to the days of the Clinton impeachment. Ever hear the national media say that MoveOn.Org also goes back to the days of the Clinton Impeachment?
Enough.
Didn't we already know this about Clymer???
Rather to Be Honored at Nov. 10 Gala for "Commitment to Fair and Accurate" Reporting
Hollywood Reporter ^
Posted on 10/17/2003 11:58 AM PDT by RatherBiased.com-- snip --
The link to the Hollywood Reporter article no longer works, but HERE is the original story - as it was posted on Yahoo! NEWS (with highlight added by RonDog):
Entertainment - Reuters TVDan Rather, 'Friends' Producers in Spotlight
Thu Oct 2, 5:34 AM ET
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - CBS News' Dan Rather and "Friends" executive producers Kevin Bright, David Crane and Marta Kauffman will honored Nov. 10 during the Museum of Television & Radio's annual gala at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Rather will be feted for his "steadfast commitment to fair and accurate news reporting," while the "Friends" producers' work "has revolutionized quality primetime entertainment," museum officials said Wednesday.
Past gala honorees include Barbara Walters, Jack Paar (news), Jerry Seinfeld (news), Garry Shandling (news), Martin Sheen (news), Mary Tyler Moore (news), Dick Wolf, David E. Kelley, Alan Alda (news), David Brinkley, Carol Burnett (news), James Burrows and Sid Caesar (news).
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
He then told me you can't believe anything you hear on the network news...Ding, ding, ding!
Now I understand why Alex said what he did to Dennis Prager.I would like to hear the playback on Alex's tape recorder. (He tape-recorded much of what I said to him.)
I know that I talk too rapidly when I am fired up, but I will bet that what I REALLY said was:"...you can't believe EVERYTHING you hear on the network news..."
Before my next FReep, I'm going to buy a good, small, digital voice recorder, the kind generally used for dictation while driving and such. You can get a good one for under $100.EXCELLENT idea!
It will be interesting to see how much of my interview with Alex that our "secret weapon" (FReep-videographer daviddennis) captured on videotape. :o)
There were literally HUNDREDS of people at this "gala dinner" sponsored by the Museum of Television and Radio, and while SOME of them may have been paparazzi whose only reason for attending was to meet Jennifer Aniston, there HAD to have been DOZENS of alleged journalists at this event...We certainly were "hard to miss!"...and they could NOT have missed seeing us. :o)
Headlights from the approaching cars illuminated our HUGE signs nicely...
...and we were ALL OVER the only entrance to the hotel - from LONG before ths first guests started arriving for the reception (at 6:30 pm) - until WELL AFTER the "gala dinner" began at 7:30 pm.
"I was left saddened that Mr. Rather and CBS News might be hurt..." - Alex Ben BlockLOL!
Alex Ben Block should be even more deeply saddened by the slimey trail of leftist bias that has disfigured the face of TV journalism over the decades of Rather's tenure... - henbane
You got THAT right!Although I also like the more elegant way that former Dan Rather co-worker (!) and Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan says it - at: www.opinionjournal.com:
PEGGY NOONAN
Give Him a Peabody
Dan Rather at a Democratic fund-raiser is not a scandal but a public service.
Friday, April 6, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDTDan Rather is 69 years old, the anchor of "CBS Evening News" for the past 20 years, probably one of the most famous men in America and a political liberal. He is in trouble this week after a front-page story in the Washington Post reported that he recently appeared at a Democratic Party fund-raiser in Texas. This is considered scandalous because . . .
Wait. Why is it scandalous? Because America didn't know he's liberal? But we know that; we've almost always known it. Because America never guessed that he was a Democrat? We knew that too. When he reports the news, he practically wears a straw hat and sings "Happy Days Are Here Again."
Why is it scandalous that he went to a Democratic Party fund-raiser? For only one reason. Because it formally and officially gives away the game. The game is pretending that he and most of the rest of the American broadcast-journalism establishment do not have strikingly uniform political views.
But it's about time that game was given away. Dan Rather at a Democratic fund-raiser is not a scandal but a public service. I say give that man a Peabody....
-- snip --
Charging the news media with liberal bias is like charging the rain with being wet.
It is of their essence, it is what they are. And pretending this is not so is a dull and stupid game. It's also over. It is a fiction that has been overtaken by events.The "CBS Evening News" was once a behemoth, the premier news show in a three-network world. Now Mr. Rather's show competes with more and newer networks, with cable news, with hundreds of channels. The hegemony of the old elite networks has ended, as we all know.
In the new, more competitive era, with scores of stations competing for viewers, with everyone looking not for a broad base but a solid niche, it's foolish to force highly opinionated reporters to act as if they don't have opinions. After all, it's not as if they are fooling the audience. It would be more practical, and probably better and less infuriating for everyone, if all the TV news shows and networks would admit the truth, declare one's bias.
The British newspapers do that. The Guardian is the authentic voice of bland Blairism, the Telegraph the grunter of conservative critiques. It doesn't make them less honest; it makes them more candid, less able to or willing to fool. This is refreshing. In a niche universe why not declare that your news show is informed by liberal values or conservative ones?
Why continue the charade?
It's not as if anyone believes it..." - Peggy Noonan
This is starting off bad. Not sure If I should continue.
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