Good evening Frank! (And everyone else!)
I can understand the emotional connection you might feel toward Dan Rather if he was one of the few US faces for you in the Philippines.
At the same time, his career--particularly as anchor--is best characterized as a slow slide toward mediocrity, partisanship, and finally, outright, amateurish fabrication. He sold his journalistic soul for partisan advantage. It is somewhat sad to see how he is going out, but at the same time, appropriate when you consider some of the rest of his record.
While many members on this list may not care much either way about the issues that Dan was partisan in favor of or partisan against, the fact was that he held himself up as a newsman and, in the end, showed that news from him could not be trusted.
CBS News has a press release which is "rather" interesting--hardly what one would expect as a farewell tribute to a loved and respected figure as prominent as Dan Rather..
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/23/entertainment/main657295.shtml
One nugget:
The triumvirate of Rather, Brokaw and ABC's Peter Jennings has ruled network news for more than two decades. Rather dominated ratings after taking over for Cronkite during the 1980s, but he was eclipsed first by Jennings and then by Brokaw. His evening news broadcast generally runs a distant third in the ratings each week.
Lowell C. Savage It's the freedom, stupid! Gun control: tyrants' tool, fools' folly.
At 06:50 PM 11/23/2004, you wrote:
Good evening everyone!
Another historical milestone in terms of network news reporting ended today with the announcement from Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, that the CBS news anchor is retiring and will be leaving CBS Evening News in March.
Many of us have been watching the CBS Evening News for decades. During the 5 1/2 years in which I lived in the Philippines, from 1997 until 2003, the CBS Evening News, and Dan Rather was one of the American faces and news sources that was available on a daily basis.
Many of us were still around and remember the retirement of Walter Cronkite, that fatherly figure of American broadcast journalism. Dan Rather's retirement probably, and most likely, doesn't jar our emotions quite as much as that of Walter Cronkite's retirement, but this is, nonetheless, another important historical milestone passing us by. Dan Rather was on the front line at CBS News for decades also -- likely more so in fact, than the other three news anchors on network news.
I'm sure we all have feelings about objectivity concerning broadcast media journalism, as I do. Nevertheless, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokow certainly do not measure up to the stature of Dan Rather in terms of a veteran news anchor, with a network that was a pioneer in reporting news for almost three-quarters of a century!
I suggest to you, that I am saddened by Dan Rather's retirement as news anchor at CBS Evening News. He was, after all, someone who had experienced the same historical realities for the past several decades, that I have exerienced myself, and understood them (although from a very different philosophical perspective).
The upbeat of this, is that in Dan Rather's retirement announcement tonight on CBS News, he also stated that he intends to be around for a while, on both 60-Minutes Sunday and Wednesday programmes, and other assignments with CBS News. I hope so!
This brings me back to a hard reality. We all get older as time passes on. Things do not remain the same. We like to cling upon what we know, and at least somewhat trust or distruct, often times not knowing what the future will bring to broadcast journalism. In all honesty, I doubt Dan Rather had THAT much to do with various slants and opinions with regard to the CBS News moguls. Some or most of that was probably decided by a carefully selected staff of engineers of politically and socially correct media planners. I propose to you, I don't know how exactly all of the mechanics of this really works.
But I will miss Dan Rather as the CBS Evening News anchor after March.
Kindest regards, Frank Reichert Moderator, Liberty Northwest Conference & Newsgroup
_______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
_______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
