Dan Rather Stirs Things Up
Dan Rather made quite a splash when he described the news on CBS, where he sat in the anchor’s chair for over 25 years, as dummied down, and tarted up. Mr. Rather, who is one of the last of the old-time legendary news anchors was speaking of the changes that have been made recently by CBS executive Leslie Moonves, who wanted the news to be “more fun, upbeat, and entertaining? to capture a younger demographic.
Many in the media have taken Mr. Rather’s comments to be a personal swipe at news anchor Katie Kouric and her Today style news coverage, but Mr. Rather insists that he is referring to the style and lack of substance in the current news coverage, and he contributes these changes not to Ms. Couric but to the decisions made by Mr. Moonves, and stated that when asked.
I have to side with Mr. Rather in this. The network news, not just CBS but all of them, have increasingly been reduced to sound bites and feel-good stories. Coverage of such non-news as the antics of the likes of Paris Hilton and Brittany Speares have replaced in depth news covering topics with depth and importance such as the economy, the war, and many other critical issues of our day to pander to the short attention spans and lack of interest in substantial matters by many of the viewing public who have been raised on ten second sound bites.
It’s far too easy for members of the media to dismiss Mr. Rather’s comments as sour grapes, but it’s hard to argue that what is called soft news such as human interests pieces and celebrity news has largely replaced hard news on all of the major news channels and their viewship has been declining for years. I’ve also read that Ms. Couric has made a number of suggestions for improving the show and stopping its declining viewership, but that these ideas have all been declined by Mr. Moonves.
An interesting take on this whole brouhaha from a British point of view can be found at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2656037.ece
press, current affairs, reporting, opinion, fact, politics, press, media, news, politics, bias, political commentary, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, CBS News
June 14th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I think that the media actually likes it that way. The government and US media are more closely tied than we’d like to think. The government can use the media as a distraction from what is really going on. We get stories and videos of Paris Hilton on CNN, while in the “real world”, there is death, war and poverty going on not only at our hands, but with us standing by and doing nothing. If the American people were aware of such things would their feelings about how our government is run change? Who knows…
June 14th, 2007 at 10:27 am
I agree with you, Letia. There are far too many stories attributed to “unnamed White House sources” for it to be an accident. What I don’t see is retractions when the stories turn out to be false.
I have known for quite a while that the Administration (any administration) will feed these leaks to the press to test the popularity of a particular theory or plan.
There are a lot of superficial and trivial things that seem to occupy the media today immediately before something really important is about to happen. Once or twice might be coincidental. As many times as it happens now, well I wonder…..
June 14th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I have to agree with Dan Rather as well. News stories these days are more likely to come from packaged sound bytes and press releases then be the result of careful fact finding and analysis, and our republic is poorer for it.