Lamestream Media is a Mastadon, stuck in the tarpit, complaining at the view!
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.
Lamestream Media is a Mastadon, stuck in the tarpit, complaining at the view!
The MSM will never be the same. And they know they are tired old dinosaurs in the final phase of decline. That's why they're so pissed.
Gosh, I didn't know I could projectile vomit 100 yards until I read this little diddy.
In today's news alone, there were stories of cut-backs in the staffs of newspapers in PA and in Britain. Every year the number of papers dwindles. Their time has come and gone. They will not be missed except as bird cage liners.
Did you read the analysis of Joseph Newcomer?
http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm
This guy totally, definitively nails it with no caveats, cavils or qualifications. He demolishes all comers at the bit level. And he ought to know. He is one of the fathers of computer typography.
CBS's own experts told them the fonts indicated forgery before they went to air. Mary Mapes' response to that was "Well, we can get an expert to say anything we need them to." Think about that for a minute, especially the use of the word "need."
And then she proceeded to air. She lied internally at CBS to get the story aired and to defend it after it aired. She hooked Burkett up with Joe Lockhart. The DNC "Fortunate Son" ad campaign started the next morning. Every major news outlet in the country had the story of the documents as a lead story the next morning. It was a cornerstone of the strategy to defeat Bush. Victory, not accuracy, was the prime directive.
The Thornburgh commission's expert, Tytel, also concluded the documents were forgeries, even though the report itself rather inexplicably did not. I am unaware of any legitimate expert opinion that the documents are not forgeries. I exclude here the bozo typewriter repair guy trotted out by CBS that week, and the various DU, Daily Kos barking moonbats out there such as Corety Pein at the Columbia Journalism Review. The guy at Utah State who came out and said they might be legit turned out to be so out of his depth it was kind of pitiful. Newcomer dismantled this guy so thoroughly they stopped the fight. Newcomer has not been refuted. There is a reason for that. He's right, the documents are fakes.
You relegate yourself to the company flat-earthers to insist that the forgery has not been proven. It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. There are no circumstances surrounding them which support their authenticity, and literally dozens, nigh unto 50 or 60 discrete facts - only some of which have been enumerated by conservatism_is_compassion - indicative of forgery, some overwhelmingly so. A general who has been retired 18 months pressuring Killian over a rating. What a freaking joke.
You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but with respect I say to you this one is in need of correction.
Regards,
I guess I'd be afraid if my world were crumbling in around me.
It's hard to re-create the mentality of that time. I can say that the young people I knew saw very little justification for fighting the Vietnamese.
Had we chosen a different strategy and avoided a massive draft that wouldn't have mattered. But we didn't and I doubt we could have.
Again...they were written in a format the the USAF (or Air Guard) did not adopt until the early 1990s.
True. That is why they used memo formats that the USAF established in the early 1990s. Whoever wrote those things was unaware of the old formats that were used in 1972.
This sounds, Dan Rather, like an apt desription of the National Guard records you tried to foist on the American public in an effort to throw the Presidential election.
Well, for darn sure we didn't.There are articles and books on the "woulda coulda shoulda" issue; probably someone other than Robert McNamara would have done differently. IMHO he was a tragic choice.
Thanks for the corroboration; I never dealt with military memos but only with the contractor (Grumman) ones under Navy contract. But everything about the "memos" says that they were created by someone or some people who did a bit of research enough to have a lot of things right - but they were apparently too young to have really appreciated the difference between typing and word processing. It really wasn't a professional job of document forgery.You OTOH would be able to make a forgery with far fewer anachronisms in it because you (presumably) dealt with the documents of the Air Force of that era. And it wouldn't likely occur to you to use Microsoft Word on its default font. But even so, it would be easy to forget some detail and slip up.
Did you read the analysis of Joseph Newcomer?
I remember reading Newcomer and being deeply impressed. But there were others who seemed just as knowledgeable, just as highly credentialed, who disputed many of his points. I couldn't decide who was right...and had no desire to become an expert in the matter.
You relegate yourself to the company flat-earthers to insist that the forgery has not been proven.
Did I insist? I'm usually much more forceful when I do that. :)
I have no problem believing the documents were forgeries. I just can't say I've come to that conclusion on my own.
I remember that CBS's experts did not speak with one voice. Am I mistaken? Mary Mapes' mentality is typical of the world she belongs to - agressive, ambitious, cynical, unprincipled (Rosalind Russel describes the mentality beautifully in one of her '30s movies with Cary Grant). Not that different from practitioners of realpolitic. It's what you want in certain positions. I fault Rather for not knowing her limits, how to properly use her.
There's nothing wrong with the strong connection between the DNC and media people who support them (Both parties use the media to their advantage when they can. They'd be unprofessional if they didn't). The bottom line is that all concerned believed that Bush was guilty of the things they accused him of - they cut corners in the proof - and believing what they did they thought they were serving a noble purpose. It's a common conceit that gets lots of people in trouble.
Victory, not accuracy, was the prime directive
In politics? NO! Are you sure?
You relegate yourself to the company flat-earthers to insist that the forgery has not been proven
We're all there at some time or other on some issues. It's a risk that comes with taking a public position...or any position.
Dan failed to mention both the internet and bias. That's odd. I wonder why he failed to detect those two forces as part of the "fear" felt in newsrooms across the nation? Could those two have anything to do with plunging ratings and more competition? Just a hunch.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Careful Phil -
Danny-Boy cries so easily.......
And, btw - wasn't Dan a part of management over there at CBS land for a few years? I guess he worked in the make-up department and was partially responsible for all that tarting up. Nothing like failing to take responsibility.
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