Does Peter Jennings still support Rather?
Joe Farah at WorldNetDaily asks a good question. The issue is why Peter Jennings shot his mouth off in October in support of Dan Rather, and whether Peter Jennings might pull the same stunt that Dan Rather tried to pull, if he thought he had the opportunity. (Tom Brokaw also shot his mouth off, but he's now retired.)
Joe Farah does suggest one thing with which I disagree:
The Killian Memos did not, therefore, speed Dan Rather's departure. But--and this is why Joe Farah might think that they did--the Killian Memos were Dan Rather's last attempt to get bragging rights for having given an election to his favorite party, the Democrats, before he left the anchor desk. And just possibly Dan hoped to stay at that desk by giving himself a "big scoop" that would rescue his ratings and make CBS and Viacom renew his contract after all. And they haven't fired him. To fire a man like Dan Rather, you buy out his contract and tell him to clean out his desk. They did neither. All they told him was that they wouldn't renew his contract. If they finally told him that after the full ugly particulars of the Killian Memos became public, then the best you could say was that those memos failed to stop the end of a career that was already finished.
Because The Suits don't give an unripe fig about journalistic ethics or about the proper posture of an anchorman and managing editor during an election campaign. All they care about is ratings. Dan Rather's ratings had suffered--and in fact his ratings were the lowest of any of the Big Three anchormen, and that is no small "boast." Ratings, of course, hurt advertising revenues--and that tells you where the advertisers are coming from: they don't care about such high-minded stuff, either, but they care a great deal when their target viewers desert a program in droves. When you pay what those guys pay per advertising minute or half-minute, you want your product to move--and how can it move if nobody's watching your ad?
Eventually, even Leslie Moonves and Sumner Redstone couldn't ignore what was happening. But they still haven't learned their lesson. They want Diane Sawyer to take over at CBS--Diane Sawyer, who used to be with CBS, but who also has a reputation for lefty advocacy journalism that, if anything, is worse than Rather's. Has everyone forgotten how she and several of her cohorts got hired under false pretenses at a Food Lion grocery store, and then tried to set up the meat department by throwing meat on the floor, hoping to catch the legitimate employees packaging it later for retail sale? Do you know that ABC still boasts about the Food Lion "investigation" in their blurb about Ms. Sawyer, this although not only was Food Lion's meat department totally vindicated, but ABC also had to pay $5.5 million in damages to Food Lion after the chain sued them for trespass and fraud? This is the woman that CBS would like to have back and even to seat at their anchor desk?
But of course, anchorpeople care even less about journalistic ethics than do The Suits--and they have none of The Suits' sensibility about ratings and ad revenue. They think they're still making the Communist revolution. (Would someone please send them each a copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm to let them know how Communism really worked out in practice?) Fine--let them have their equivalent of Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London--and very soon that's all they will have.
Joe Farah does suggest one thing with which I disagree:
Do you honestly believe Rather's retirement was unrelated to the scandal? Does anyone believe that?...Do you think Brokaw and Jennings believe Rather's departure is not connected to his journalistic faux pas?Here is where I part company with Joe: Dan Rather's ratings had been in the tank for ten years already. The Suits at CBS and Viacom were not going to renew his contract. When the Killian Memos story broke, and Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs first reproduced them (in Microsoft Word, no less), Rush Limbaugh was saying that Dan Rather was going to step down from the anchor desk next spring, so what did he have to worry about?
The Killian Memos did not, therefore, speed Dan Rather's departure. But--and this is why Joe Farah might think that they did--the Killian Memos were Dan Rather's last attempt to get bragging rights for having given an election to his favorite party, the Democrats, before he left the anchor desk. And just possibly Dan hoped to stay at that desk by giving himself a "big scoop" that would rescue his ratings and make CBS and Viacom renew his contract after all. And they haven't fired him. To fire a man like Dan Rather, you buy out his contract and tell him to clean out his desk. They did neither. All they told him was that they wouldn't renew his contract. If they finally told him that after the full ugly particulars of the Killian Memos became public, then the best you could say was that those memos failed to stop the end of a career that was already finished.
Because The Suits don't give an unripe fig about journalistic ethics or about the proper posture of an anchorman and managing editor during an election campaign. All they care about is ratings. Dan Rather's ratings had suffered--and in fact his ratings were the lowest of any of the Big Three anchormen, and that is no small "boast." Ratings, of course, hurt advertising revenues--and that tells you where the advertisers are coming from: they don't care about such high-minded stuff, either, but they care a great deal when their target viewers desert a program in droves. When you pay what those guys pay per advertising minute or half-minute, you want your product to move--and how can it move if nobody's watching your ad?
Eventually, even Leslie Moonves and Sumner Redstone couldn't ignore what was happening. But they still haven't learned their lesson. They want Diane Sawyer to take over at CBS--Diane Sawyer, who used to be with CBS, but who also has a reputation for lefty advocacy journalism that, if anything, is worse than Rather's. Has everyone forgotten how she and several of her cohorts got hired under false pretenses at a Food Lion grocery store, and then tried to set up the meat department by throwing meat on the floor, hoping to catch the legitimate employees packaging it later for retail sale? Do you know that ABC still boasts about the Food Lion "investigation" in their blurb about Ms. Sawyer, this although not only was Food Lion's meat department totally vindicated, but ABC also had to pay $5.5 million in damages to Food Lion after the chain sued them for trespass and fraud? This is the woman that CBS would like to have back and even to seat at their anchor desk?
But of course, anchorpeople care even less about journalistic ethics than do The Suits--and they have none of The Suits' sensibility about ratings and ad revenue. They think they're still making the Communist revolution. (Would someone please send them each a copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm to let them know how Communism really worked out in practice?) Fine--let them have their equivalent of Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London--and very soon that's all they will have.
posted by Temlakos at 10:39 AM
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