Rather Insane

[SilverNRed]

Dan Rather has a good cry

 

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.

Cue the Twilight Zone music.

 

Did Dan Rather think he could spend his entire career as a political activist posing as a journalist and not have it bite him in the ass one day? Apparently he did.

 

But, Dan, is there any current journalism you do like?

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.

In other words, he fully approves of the race-baiting, Bush-bashing, melodramatic, editorializing coverage by the teleprompter readers- ERRRRRRRRR, journalists who don't know the first thing about disaster relief and aren't willing to learn so they can provide such information to their audiences.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

"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.

 

That is one of the stupidest things I've heard today. And I've heard a shitload of really stupid things today.

 

And the irony of that whole story is that Dan was rather well known for creating an atmosphere in the newsroom.

[UConn James]

I would agree with the "dumbed-down, tarted-up" thingie. This will be solidified when Katie Friggin' Couric is named to take over CBS's anchor position when her contract w/ NBC is up next year.

 

No more is there such thing as the civic-minded, useful, independent, facts-is-facts, local newspaper/outlet. I would understand if that's what he was getting weepy about; imagine you built a fabulous mansion and 50 years later came back and it was public housing ('course, he didn't so much build the mansion....). Everything is national news, and at least 50 percent of any paper or broadcast is pulled off the wires and plugged right in. When you do that, you mostly get a pile of useless drivel. But I will say that Reuters' coverage of Katrina was pretty good.