Posted on 09/19/2005 8:36:17 PM PDT by aculeus
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Monday that there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career.
Rather famously tangled with President Nixon and his aides during the Watergate years while Rather was a hard-charging White House correspondent.
Addressing the Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan, occasionally forcing back tears, he said that in the intervening years, politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a "new journalism order."
He said this pressure -- along with the "dumbed-down, tarted-up" coverage, the advent of 24-hour cable competition and the chase for ratings and demographics -- has taken its toll on the news business. "All of this creates a bigger atmosphere of fear in newsrooms," Rather said.
Rather was accompanied by HBO Documentary and Family president Sheila Nevins, both of whom were due to receive lifetime achievement awards at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards on Monday evening.
Nevins said that even in the documentary world, there's a certain kind of intimidation brought to bear these days, particularly from the religious right.
"If you made a movie about (evolutionary biologist Charles) Darwin now, it would be revolutionary," Nevins said. "If we did a documentary on Darwin, I'd get a thousand hate e-mails."
Nevin asked Rather if he felt the same type of repressive forces in the Nixon administration as in the current Bush administration.
"No, I do not," Rather said. That's not to say there weren't forces trying to remove him from the White House beat while reporting on Watergate; but Rather said he felt supported by everyone above him, from Washington bureau chief Bill Small to then-news president Dick Salant and CBS chief William S. Paley.
"There was a connection between the leadership and the led . . . a sense of, 'we're in this together,"' Rather said. It's not that the then-leadership of CBS wasn't interested in shareholder value and profits, Rather said, but they also saw news as a public service. Rather said he knew very little of the intense pressure to remove him in the early 1970s because of his bosses' support.
Nevins took up the cause for Rather, who was emotional several times during the event.
"When a man is close to tears discussing his work and his lip quivers, he deserves bosses who punch back. I feel I would punch back for Dan," Nevins said.
Rather praised the coverage of Hurricane Katrina by the new generation of TV journalists and acknowledged that he would have liked to have reported from the Gulf Coast. "Covering hurricanes is something I know something about," he said.
"It's been one of television news' finest moments," Rather said of the Katrina coverage. He likened it to the coverage of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
"They were willing to speak truth to power," Rather said of the coverage.
Rather sidestepped the question of what should happen to the evening news in the expected makeover. "Not my call," he said. And he said he hadn't been asked, either.
"I gave it everything I had, I didn't hold anything back. I did the best newscast we were capable of doing," Rather said.
Nevins, who almost single-handedly has kept the art of the independent documentary on television, said the HBO documentaries show real life and do it with as little damage to the subjects as possible. She said the producers and directors "respect mostly the people on the other side of the camera."
Nevins said she didn't shy away from such R-rated topics as "G-String Divas" and "Taxicab Confessions" but noted that sex and passion have been topics of literature since Chaucer's day. "The most R-rated is a body bag, not a naked body," Nevins said.
When did we start talking about the Democrat Party and Joe Biden?
I knew Oswald wasn't in it alone.
In the 70's, Doonesbury used to make fun of Rather as being the "gossip" monger on CBS. A long series of cartoons showed him being on a panel discussion on celebrity jounalism with Rona Barrett, and being mocked as the airhead he is. Funny how Trudeau never continued on this subject.
While I am on this rant, maybe the reason newsrooms can't afford the "hard hitting journalism" they supposedly used to offer might be the $10 million a year they pay to idiots like Rather, Couric, Jennings or Brokaw.
What kind of tacky people would give Dan Rather an award after what he did?
Somewhere in the article, Rather was proud of how the media was "willing to speak truth to power" during Katrina. The Freepers who exposed Dan's fraudulence should be proud that they spoke truth to the old media's power.
Good, we are making a difference! I hope they can't sleep at night.
No go back under the rock that you retired to, Dan!
Rather and his ilk have been lying, sensationalizing, twisting the truth, and generally misleading the public for four decades to advance their socialist agenda. Thank God for the information highway.
Precisely!
This isn't actually posted as "news" is it? :-)
What Dan's upset about is the biased left thats dominated the MSM loss of power.
Before the internet became a popular source for news and outlets like fox news came around, the left completely dominated the news. The far-left would argue with the moderate left and that was their idea of biased news reporting.
What Dan is crying about is all about loss of power.
"Who else is a huge AH and a complete moron and gets paid so well for their fictional reporting? That's Incredible!"
Michael Moore?
"If you made a movie about (evolutionary biologist Charles) Darwin now, it would be revolutionary," Nevins said. "If we did a documentary on Darwin, I'd get a thousand hate e-mails."
Yeah, the documentarians are sure living in fear. OMG, I might get some hate mail. I would love to see a documentary about communist symphatizers in Hollywood in the 30's and 40's who supported the Ribbentrop/Molotov treaty. Let's see if that would win any awards.
Code words for "I am a marxist."
Just like the farewell TV special that Dan had to host himself because his bosses wouldn't be seen in the same area code as Dan and they couldn't make anybody else show up. Dan thinks he's a martyr, most of America knows he's a friggin' idiot.
It's Bill Burkett! The unimpeachable source himself!
Or at least he's close enough to being Bill Burkett to meet CBS's standards.
I haven't left yet........
Thanks for the good wishes - I really dread the PT sessions.
NOW - I am outta here!!!
Yep! Dan Rather spent 40 years whoring himself for CBS. He fits right in with Nevins other pay-television ventures.
No, they were spinning propaganda. But the power of the truth will take them down, just like it took you down, you whiny socialist.
P.S. Who kissed better, Saddam or Fidel?
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