Connect/Eddie Holt: Do you realise that CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather is a communist?
Well, "political consultant" and occasional radio host Chris Begala has accused Rather of "communism at its most fundamental level". Begala's charge is just the most idiotic in the line of the "Can Dan" campaign begun in 1988 by the conservative media critic Reed Irvine, who died last week.
Rather (73), who announced this week that he will retire as anchorman on March 9th, 2005, has been the face of CBS Evening News since 1981, when he succeeded Walter Kronkite. Two months ago he became embroiled in a journalism skirmish over a story based on questionable documents challenging George Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
"I want to say personally and directly, I'm sorry," Rather said during a later broadcast. "This was an error made in good faith." Good faith or not, Dan Rather is, as they say in the US, "toast". He claims he held talks with CBS bosses earlier this year about when to step down. A Democratic Party website, however, describes him as "another victim on this_is_a_left_sq_bracketKarl] Rove's hit list".
Rather is a Democrat. In today's US that makes him a "liberal" (or even a "communist"!). An investigation is under way into the sources of his report about Bush's military service. Nonetheless, New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester says: "Rather is the Lynndie England of network news. Retirement is too kind. He must be sacked." George Bush has described Forrester as "a patriot and an entrepreneur", adding: "He understands what I know - that the role of government is not to create wealth but an environment in which the entrepreneur and small business can grow." Furthermore, it seems, government is not to be questioned by journalists so the likes of old-fashioned Dan Rather must be sacked.
In 2002, Rather told the BBC that the "patriotic" climate post-9/11 prevented American journalists asking tough questions of leaders. Eleven days after the attacks, he told CNN he didn't "feel right" wearing a US flag pin on his jacket during broadcasts, as most TV talking heads did at the time. (He did, nonetheless, wear a pin during broadcasts.) But he was making the wrong noises in Bush's America. Despite ostentatiously offering himself on TV for national service, Dan Rather was damned as a 'liberal'. "If this_is_a_left_sq_bracketBush] needs me in uniform, tell me where and when - I'm there," he said. "I would willingly die for my country at a moment's notice and on the command of my president," he has since added in an interview.
In 1961, opinion polls recorded for the first time that a majority of Americans got their information about the world primarily from television. They got their information about national and international affairs largely from national network news. Today, the once major US networks - ABC, NBC and CBS - are in decline, and so is journalism.
Rather's longtime rival, Tom Brokaw, will retire from NBC's Nightly News next month. That leaves Peter Jennings of ABC's World News Tonight as the last of the anchoring triumvirate who have ruled network news for more than 20 years. US network news is certainly not BBC 2's Newsnight or Channel 4's 7 p.m. News but tripe such as Fox News is replacing it, and that is alarming.
The Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press has published a survey since this year's election. The survey found that the Internet continued to gain ground as a news source for voters. Forty-one per cent of respondents said they used the web to obtain campaign news and 21 per cent said the net was their "primary news source".
The trend was most pronounced among voters under 30. Almost 60 per cent of such voters said they used the internet as a news source and 40 per cent said it was their preferred medium. Clearly, the future of TV network news is bleak and even though the net offers conservative and "liberal" accounts, it inevitably gravitates towards the agenda of those with political power.
A climate of fear pervades contemporary American journalism. Consider the rumpus that erupted when RTÉ's Carole Coleman - hardly a media Rottweiler - asked perfectly reasonable questions of George Bush a few months ago. Unused to any combative questioning from the media, the Bush cabal saw Coleman as impertinent.
Anyway, last month Brokaw and Jennings rallied around Rather. Brokaw accused some Republicans of "demonising" Rather as part of a "kind of political jihad". The "patriot and entrepreneur" Forrester wasn't mentioned, but his remarks display what Brokaw was referring to. The Democrats' website describes Rather "as one of the few that wasn't a media whore".
It's clear what's happening and it's not just in America, although the trend is most startling there. Even the arguably egoistic Kate Adie this week accused TV networks of dumbing down by recruiting reporters with "cute faces, cute bottoms and nothing in between". We have, for instance, no idea how many civilians were killed in Falluja. In the "information age", we're not meant to.