The sorry state of American journalism, as told by Dan Rather

[DFW]

The 3 DU bloggers were busy, so I stole an hour, and filled in on taking notes at a talk by Dan Rather, and a brief Q&A afterward. Dan Rather must be in his mid-seventies, but except for the expected physical aging, he seems to be very much the old Dan Rather--no wonder he got too uncomfortable for CBS! Here are the main points of the part I caught (some of his main points, many of which will be familiar as subjects that Helen Thomas has also spoken out upon forcefully).

Comment above the dotted line are taken from notes from Rather's talk. My own comments are either in brackets or below the dotted line:


One rhetorical question he posed: How did American journalism get to the sorry state in which it currently finds itself? Answer: because if you ask an uncomfortable question, then you get to ask no more . When money interests trump the interests of journalism, money wins, and news stops.

Big conglomerates buy up media as a small part of their global holdings. These are sometimes big corporations that have no interest in news per se, just in so far as it is another business with which to try and make money, i.e. attract advertising. Shareholder value, reviewed sometimes as often as quarterly, becomes the main factor of consideration for the owner. Where does real news fit into this (i.e. it doesn't).

He said (and admitted: possibly naively) that we should hold the government accountable to maintain a free press .

Genuine debates are suppressed or discouraged and turned into entertainment--shouting matches that contain no news.

Policy has become a factor in determining what is news and what is not. American interests are closely tied to there being oil and gas pipelines running through Georgia , and this had as much (or more) to do with our support of Georgia as anything else. This was, of course, not reported a such by the MSM.

Resources and talent are expensive, and detract from the bottom line. But if this is the case, then there will never be another Walter Cronkite, and lots more Hannity-types.

Rather said that he had raised his voice about this general tendency in the past, but had, himself, never imagined it would deteriorate to the extent that it has today,

The mission of the press, he quoted loosely from Finley Peter Dunne, was to afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted. Delivering good shareholder value is, alas, by far not always compatible with good news practice.

Fear should not be a characteristic of American journalists (skepticism should).

There has been a lot (i.e. too much) consolidation of US media, which leads to a lack of news. He said we should all be alert to media's bowing to outside interests, and let them know when we think they are doing it! He said that they do read feedback. With many voices, Rather said, they will listen. More vigilance is needed to maintain a free press these days than in the past.

He said flat out that the press was rolling over and playing dead ,
and that a spine transplant was needed so that we didn't get sleepwalked into war again. Continuing support for that war depended on the US public back home not being able to see how bad it was (coffins brought home at night, wounded rarely shown, etc.).
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One thing is for sure--under the present circumstances as Dan Rather described them, it will be a long time before there is another Walter Cronkite--or even a Dan Rather.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. all true, but how does the bbc

keep getting it right?

their reporters ask the most amazing in your face questions, and keep on going

[hay rick]

10. oases

BBC and PBS are oases surrounded by a wasteland- the vast desert of commercial TV.
BBC's mission statement: The BBC is run in the interests of its viewers and listeners...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/running /

The public stations provide more good and useful programming than all the commercial outlets combined despite using only a fraction of the resources. Sometimes market solutions just plain fail. In the case of news reporting, the failure is catastrophic.

[panader0]

2. Thanks. Great report.

[zeemike]

3. K&R n/t

[TheDebbieDee]

4. There is no American Journalism anymore, only propaganda. N/T

[gi4obama]

5. Great job. Thanks for the report.

I found this a few minutes ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNwXjtfyKto

[MsLeopard]

6. Thanks for posting this - K&R

Dan Rather has it so right. Our media is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the corporatists running our country, serving up "information" used to manipulate the masses. I hope America wakes the hell up.

[offog]

7. Right on!

I'm a DU fan in Canada, and I depend on sites such as DU and Crooks and Liars for American Political news. The MSM coverage is ridiculous. BTW, I'd like to recommend a couple of great articles from a seniors newsletter produced up here in my home town. I wanted to send this info to the site administrators, but you need to be on Microsoft Passport, which I don't have access to. I'm a low income person who uses gmail on the computers at the public library.

The 2 articles are the first 2 items in Seniors' Voice. The first is titled "With Elites United and Majority Split, Inequality Worsens". This item definitely applies to America too. The second item is titled "Amnesty Int'nal Focuses on Americans Voting Rights".

The website is at:
http//nonprofits.accesscomm.ca/srvoice/index.html When you enter this, you'll get "Did you mean (yada yada)" and a short list. Click on Seniors' Voice. Make sure it's the one published in Saskatchewan. It should be at the top of the list. When you get into the site, click on "Newsletters". Then find "August 2008", which is currently on the top of the list. Click on "Entire Issue in PDF format".

Trust me; these articles are well-worth checking out! Thanks to everyone at DU for the many hours of enjoyment I get out of the site.

[hay rick]

8. clickable link

http://nonprofits.accesscomm.ca/srvoice/pdf/Seniors-Voi...

[hay rick]

9. quote from first article- excellent

IBM’s latest Global CEO Study disclosed that the
combined income of the 1,130 top executives
surveyed in 2007 was $2.224 trillion—an amount
higher than the GDP of the entire continent of
Africa. Eleven hundred CEOs wallow in more
cash than 900 million Africans.