Fear and Loathing In Dan Rather's Brain

Wish he'd made the Nixonian announcement that we "won't have Dan Rather to kick around anymore" and just gone away:

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.

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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."

I know the New Man should be unafraid to display his emotions (well, I guess he has to pretend to have emotions, and then display them), but seriously, this guy goes on more crying jags than Sally Field in Soapdish.

Or, for that matter, he cries as much as Aaron Broussard, so upset by the death of his friend's wife he couldn't remember if she'd died five days ago or only two.

Seems about as emotionally-centered, too.

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.

The "atmosphere of fear" is caused by people having the desire and technology to talk back to you, Dan.

The media is in crisis. For a long while they enjoyed a not-very-well-earned imprimatur of credibility. They've squandered that, and feel the loss of that power -- and this is about power -- in their very bones.

But rather than attempting to rebuild that credibility, earn it, most prefer to whine about its eroision. "People should listen to us," they feel in their marrow. "We went to good schools and are filled with good intentions and we're brave and conscientious and wise."

Well, eff that noise, Dan.

Rather sort of gives the game away here:

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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.

"Speaking truth to power" is of course an obnoxious slogan of left-liberals, reeking of sixties revolutionary funk like an MC5 8-track MacGuyvered into a makeshift bong.

It's a gassy bit of nonsense filled with questionable assumptions (whose truth? And whose power will you speak it to?), but I'm pretty confident that Rather speaks for 80% of the press corps when he says this.

You can either be advocates and agents of change or you can be disinterested reporters of news. You're entitled to do either, but you cannot claim to be doing both simultaneously.

The unexamined lie at the heart of journalism is that these two contradictory missions can be reconciled through the "professionalism" learned at j-school.

They can't be reconciled. Rather's idea that they can be reconciled is based on his assumption that his liberal agenda, being the One True Way, is objective truth, and hence both of his missions -- advancing progressive liberalism, reporting the news without fear or favor -- are basically just different names for the same thing, to wit, "Speaking Truth to Power."

posted by Ace at 11:45 AM

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