Okay. How 'bout a trade:
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, this fool should try doing something the anti-religious left doesn't like. He'd consider the reaction he's whining about welcome in comparison.
Courage Dan, courage.
wow---that bit of breaking news... just slipped past my radar!!!
oh, well....now she has two TV shows, and more fans than ever!!! go figure.
LOOK! IT'S ELVIS IN A TUBE TOP!
Swipe.
I bet this is true. MSM reporters can no longer get away with lying for liberalism without instant fisking by a horde of bloggers and bulletin board posters. That must be scary indeed.
"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."
Who's he kidding? This "intimidation" is simply "accountability" - and the left HATES accountability.
Okay. How 'bout a trade:
Dan Rather is one of my idols....
Who else is a huge AH and a complete moron and gets paid so well for their fictional reporting? That's Incredible!
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Now thanks to the internet, a political forum named Free Republic, with help from blogs like LGF and the FNC, brought down one of the major icons of the left. I truly believe if we had the same means of information during the 60's and 70's the Vietnam war would have had a different ending.
I truly hope Dan Rather has nightmares where he is running from his anchor chair, trying to shred the NG memoes, while a group of Freepers led by Buckhead, TankerKC and Jim Robinson chase him.
That was worth saying twice.
LOL! Now THAT was funny...I actually looked up from my computer...:)
Standing in for Dan tonight...
Oh my!
I looked at the link and it's not "The Onion." Not that we can post stuff from them anyway.
Since it's 'talk like a pirate day,' I'll just add this comment; Arrrgghh!
Too,too funny for words! LOL
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