It was a foreshadow of things to come...
Kennedy School of Government discussion 'The Press and the Election'
Shorenstein Center panel convenes Brokaw, Jennings, Lehrer, Rather, Woodruff
On this panel discussion about the state of the media (before Rather's recent memo Waterloo), Rather and Woodruff were evidently a bit cowed by the severe freeping they were getting; concerned Americans were apparently complaining to their studios -- especially via E-mail.
Judy was particularly concerned that this could disrupt her professional focus!
Angry comments were apparently effective in making them realize that many of the American people are actually afraid of the press and what they're doing to our nation with their selfish partisanship. As noted below, the whole transcript is there to read. I may post a thread for its URL if I get enough interest. It's a 77-page PDF file.
I'd be exaggerating if I said that the discussion empasized how the panelists felt intimidated. But I picked up on that.
MS. WOODRUFF: No, I don't see it as a media problem. And I'm going to chime in with what Jim, what he and Tom have said, I mean it's going on but what we do in our newsrooms, the decisions we make about what we are going to cover and how we are going to approach stories can't change because people are out there fighting each other. Sure, it makes it an interesting story and we want to cover that story. But in no way should we feel on the defensive for example, if we get a lot of e-mails or letters or calls or whatever, and people are saying, you're not representing that point of view, sure, we should pay attention, we want what we do, to a degree, to be interactive, we want to be responsive, in a way. But it can never govern what we do. And I would just add here, I think a lot of this divisiveness that we are talking about here this morning has been churned up by our political leadership, I mean there is a lot that they are doing, both political parties, to churn this up. --Transcript