Good morning Daniel, all!
Daniel Frackwell wrote to Lowell C. Savage...
> As I understand it, "The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" was Rather's baby.
> He decided the content, which stories to air and which to bury, and in what
> order. There is no evidence that he disagreed with his bosses on content.
Some of that certainly may be true, however, apparently this time around it appears that 'some of his bosses' may have disagreed strongly with Dan Rather's content or take on the Shrub's National Guard documents. I believe perhaps the story may have been poorly researched, but it should have been something certainly important enough to air as national news.
Actually, my understanding is that Dan personally "vouched for" the documents even after the "document experts" hired by seeBS had raised questions about them.
Daniel Frackwell wrote: > LCS> That is pretty much what I thought your point was. And my point was > LCS> that Rather's resume, while long, is not particularly honorable. He > LCS> sullied his reputation in his eagerness to "get Bush" and since CBS > LCS> didn't fire him outright over that story, he has managed to take CBS > LCS> down with him.
To which, you replied:
> All three broadcast networks' news departments have decayed greatly since the
> days of Cronkheit, Severeid, Reasoner, Edwards, et al, and the revered Edward
> R. Murrow. In the "old days," the news departments were expected to lose
> money. When the bean counters called a halt to that, things went downhill
> fast.
CBS News has had major shakeups before, one of the most public ones was when Connie Chung, former co-anchor with Dan Rather, was fired, which also was publicly seen as a 'resignation with regret'. Also, there has been a marked decline on the part of the vast many Americans who place national or world news as a very high priority in their lives, which is very sad.
Actually, the cable channels and talk radio and the internet probably had more to do with it. If someone is really a news junky, they watch CNN, or Fox or C-Span or listen to the radio or hit sites on the internet. By the time Dan Rather, et. al. come on, the news junky already knows the news of the day and the evening broadcast tells him/her nothing new.
> A milestone may be passing, but I, for one, won't miss him.
Well, as I wrote the first time, Dan Rather won't be leaving CBS entirely. This is obviously a demotion, as he'll be around for a while at least in covering special assignments, and on 60 Minutes Sunday and Wednesday editions. My gut feeling is that he will, as many other news journalists have done, go to other outlets, perhaps one of the cable news networks. Who knows. A lot of the big three network personalities have done just that.
Yes, like Walter Cronkite, the longer he hangs around, the more people are going to wonder how good a job he did. Walter Cronkite was interviewed several years back and was asked what his greatest regret was about retiring. His response was that he no longer was able to "affect the news." Now, I suppose you could interpret that as his having a desire to affect the way that news items were covered. But it certainly sounds like he was lamenting the fact that he was no longer able to affect news in a partisan way. Add to that some of his extremely partisan statements and you have to wonder how much trust SHOULD have been placed in "the most trusted man in America."
Lowell C. Savage It's the freedom, stupid! Gun control: tyrants' tool, fools' folly.
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