MEDIA REFORM: Dan Rather Slams Corporate News

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather delivered a blistering critique of corporate news on Saturday night

I am grateful to be here and I am, most of all, gratified by the energy I have seen tonight and at this conference. It will take this kind of energy — and more — to sustain what is good in our news media... to improve what is deficient... and to push back against the forces and the trends that imperil journalism and that — by immediate extension — imperil democracy itself.

The Framers of our Constitution enshrined freedom of the press in the very first Amendment, up at the top of the Bill of Rights, not because they were great fans of journalists — like many politicians, then and now, they were not — but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be."

And it is because of this Constitutionally-protected role that I still prefer to use the word "press" over the word "media." If nothing else, it serves as a subtle reminder that — along with newspapers — radio, television, and, now, the Internet, carry the same Constitutional rights, mandates, and responsibilities that the founders guaranteed for those who plied their trade solely in print.

So when you hear me talk about the press, please know that I am talking about all the ways that news can be transmitted. And when you hear me criticize and critique the press, please know that I do not exempt myself from these criticisms.

In our efforts to take back the American press for the American people, we are blessed this weekend with the gift of good timing. For anyone who may have been inclined to ask if there really is a problem with the news media, or wonder if the task of media reform is, indeed, an urgent one... recent days have brought an inescapable answer, from a most unlikely source.

A source who decided to tell everyone, quote, "what happened."

But the second reaction is: Wait a minute... I do remember at least some reporters, and some news organizations, asking tough questions — asking them of the president, of those in his administration, of White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and — oh yes — of Scott McClellan himself, once he took over for Mr. Fleischer a few months after the invasion.

If we look at the wide shot, we can see, in one corner of our screen, the White House briefing room filled with the White House press corps... and, filling the rest of the screen, the finite but disproportionately powerful universe that has become known as "mainstream media" — the newspapers and news programs, real and alleged, that employ these White House correspondents — the news organizations that are, in turn, owned by a shockingly few, much larger corporations, for which news is but a miniscule part of their overall business interests.

But the correspondents — the really good ones — these correspondents ask their tough questions.

And these questions are met with what is now called, euphemistically and much too kindly, what is now called "message discipline."

Well, we used to have a better and more accurate term for "message discipline." We called it "stonewalling."

But when a tough question is asked and not answered, when reputable people come before the public and say, "wait a minute, something's not right here," the press has treated them like voices crying in the wilderness. These views, though they might be given air time, become lone dots — dots that journalists don't dare connect, even if the connections are obvious, even if people on the Internet and in the independent press are making these very same connections. The mainstream press doesn't connect these dots because someone might then accuse them of editorializing, or of being the, quote, "liberal media."

But connecting these dots — making disparate facts make sense — is a big part of the real work of journalism.

So how does this happen? Why does this happen?

Let me say, by way of answering, that quality news of integrity starts with an owner who has guts.

In a news organization with an owner who has guts, there is an incentive to ask the tough questions, and there is an incentive to pull together the facts — to connect the dots — in a way that makes coherent sense to the news audience.

But it is rare, now, to find a major news organization owned by an individual, someone who can say, in effect, "The buck stops here." The more likely motto now is: "The news stops... with making bucks.

America's biggest, most important news organizations have, over the past 25 years, fallen prey to merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition... to the point where they are, now, tiny parts of immeasurably larger corporate entities — entities whose primary business often has nothing to do with news. Entities that may, at any given time, have literally hundreds of regulatory issues before multiple arms of the government concerning a vast array of business interests.

These are entities that, as publicly-held and traded corporations, have as their overall, reigning mandate: Provide a return on shareholder value. Increase profits. And not over time, not over the long haul, but quarterly.

One might ask just where the news fits into this model. And if you really need an answer, you can turn on your television, where you will see the following:

Political analysis reduced to in-studio shouting matches between partisans armed with little more than the day's talking points.

Precious time and resources wasted on so-called human-interest stories, celebrity fluff, sensationalist trials, and gossip.

A proliferation of "news you can use" that amounts to thinly-disguised press releases for the latest consumer products.

And, though this doesn't get said enough, local news, which is where most Americans get their news, that seems not to change no matter what town or what city you're in... so slavish is its adherence to the "happy talk" formula and the dictum that, "If it bleeds, it leads."

I could continue for hours, cataloging journalistic sins of which I know you are all too aware. But, as the time grows late, let me say that almost all of these failings come down to this: In the current model of corporate news ownership, the incentive to produce good and valuable news is simply not there.

Good news, quality news of integrity, requires resources and it requires talent. These things are expensive, these things eat away at the bottom line.

Years ago, in the eighties and the nineties, when the implications of these cost-trimming measures were becoming impossible to ignore, and the quality of the news was clearly threatened, I spoke out against this cutting of news operations to the bone and beyond. Even then, though, I couldn't have imagined that the cost-cutting imperatives would go as far as they have today — deep into the marrow of what was once considered a public trust.

But since the financial resources always seem to be available for entertainment, promotion, and — last but not least — for lobbying... perhaps there is an even more important reason why the incentive to produce quality news is absent, and that is: quality news of integrity, by its very nature, is sure to rock the boat now and then.

Good, responsible news worthy of its Constitutional protections will, in that famous phrase, afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted.

So what does this mean for us tonight, and what is to be done?

It means that we need to be on the alert for where, when, and how our news media bows to undue government influence. And you need to let news organizations know, in no uncertain terms, that you won't stand for it... that you, as news consumers, are capable of exerting pressure of your own.

It means that we need to continue to let our government know that, when it comes to media consolidation, enough is enough. Too few voices are dominating, homogenizing, and marginalizing the news. We need to demand that the American people get something in exchange for the use of airwaves that belong, after all, to the people.

It means that we need to ensure that the Internet, where free speech reigns and where journalism does not have to pass through a corporate filter... remains free.

We need to say, loud and clear, that we don't want big corporations enjoying preferred access to — or government acting as the gatekeeper for — this unique platform for independent journalism.

And it means that we need to hold the government to its mandate to protect the freedom of the press, including independent and non-commercial news media.