Dan, you're a liar and you're boring. I'm not interested in hearing from ex-newshacks any more than ex-presidents.
-Dan
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.
Hey Dan, say "Hello" to Lucy Rameriz for me...
I just turned the channel...
Martha Stewart is on Letterman...isn't she supposed to be on home confinement????
-Dan
One thing hasn't changed - the cast of characters is still made up of pompous, pumped-up, self-absorbed drama queens convinced of their own intelligence and importance for no reason that is evident to anyone who made it through grammar school. Watergate wasn't the best thing ever to happen to broadcast news, it was the very worst. Nixon's final revenge was to leave the field to this gaggle of pompadoured darlings who aren't fit to polish his gravestone.
nope .. she's done her time and is a free women
There was a time (nearly 30 years ago) that I thought Dan Rathers and Barbara Walters were "IT".....after getting out of broadcast news 10 years later I had a different opinion.
My opinion of them hasn't changed, however, I must agree with much of what he is saying here.
Flame away at me for that opinion and I will respond - but not until I return from physical therapy in the morning, as I am calling it a night for now.
What he was afraid of was being uncovered as a fraud.
As a result, the Internet has superceded the television as the best place to get news information. Unless, of course, you want to hear about Aruba missing teen or (insert missing white chick here).
Commie.
:-)
So what? This disgrace should not even be permitted the privilege of seeing what a newsroom looks like these days, after the dishonest propaganda he's been shown to have perpetrated.
This has-been needs to head out to the pasture. Maybe the cows will listen to his lies and delusions of grandeur.
As Dan and his ilk willfully and gleefully participated in that pressure as dictated by the DNC
He called it a "new journalism order.
What's the frequency Kenneth ?
That's for fiction writing, right?
Damn shame when a legendary news anchor can no longer have his lies and forged documents go unchallenged.
Who could have guessed a few years ago that we would be hearing from Dan Rather -- unemployed, sobbing about how unfair life is, getting his support from some soft-porn producer -- whining about the Good Old Days? Sometimes life can be so beautiful.
What a schmuck.
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