Emotional Rather blasts 'new journalism order'

Breitbart reported Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Monday that there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career.

News anchors are being held responsible for what they say, and they can no longer distort the news like they were used to being able to do. I can imagine that would strike fear into someone like Rather.

Rather famously tangled with President Nixon and his aides during the Watergate years while Rather was a hard-charging White House correspondent. Addressing the Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan, occasionally forcing back tears, he said that in the intervening years, politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a "new journalism order."

The "new journalism order" is being Fair and Balanced, and "We Report, You Decide"

He said this pressure -- along with the "dumbed-down, tarted-up" coverage, the advent of 24-hour cable competition and the chase for ratings and demographics -- has taken its toll on the news business. "All of this creates a bigger atmosphere of fear in newsrooms," Rather said.

The tarting up is just what you are trying hoping it will obscure the fact that you are lying.

Rather was accompanied by HBO Documentary and Family president Sheila Nevins, both of whom were due to receive lifetime achievement awards at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards on Monday evening. Nevins said that even in the documentary world, there's a certain kind of intimidation brought to bear these days, particularly from the religious right.

They know God, hence they know the source for Ultimate Truth, and they just don't accept the Left Wing drivel that the MSM wants to spew.

"If you made a movie about (evolutionary biologist Charles) Darwin now, it would be revolutionary," Nevins said. "If we did a documentary on Darwin, I'd get a thousand hate e-mails."

Only if you insisted that Darwin proved the non-existence of God. Which he didn't. He just described one of the tools the Intelligent Designer used in Creation.

Matt Duffy blogged An atmosphere of fear, eh? Fear of what? Getting the story right? Not operating in a vacuum of political bias? Count me as a supporter of the "new journalism order."