Dan Rather Admits Press Failure on Iraq -- and Hits Corporate Media

Scott McClellan's claims in his new book -- that the mainstream media were "complicit enablers" in the run-up to the Iraq war -- have been met with denials from past and present TV news anchors such as Tom Brokaw, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams (with Katie Couric admitting some failures). But Dan Rather, who was CBS anchor in 2003, offered a strong critique of the journalists' performance in his speech to the National Conference for Media Reform yesterday.

Rather opened by admitting that, referring to McClellan, " Whatever his motives for saying these things, he's right," but he also recalled that some reporters did ask tough questions: "So how do we reconcile these competing reactions? Well, we need to pull back for what we in television call the wide shot."

Rather then explored the big picture, starting with:

In the wake of 9/11 and in the run-up to Iraq, these news organizations made a decision -- consciously or unconsciously, but unquestionably in a climate of fear -- to accept the overall narrative frame given them by the White House, a narrative that went like this: Saddam Hussein, brutal dictator, harbored weapons of mass destruction and, because of his supposed links to al Qaeda, this could not be tolerated in a post-9/11 world....

Now, cut back to your evening news, or your daily newspaper... where that White House Correspondent dutifully repeats the question he asked of the president or his press secretary, and dutifully relates the answer he was given -- the same non-answer we've already heard dozens of times, which amounts to a pitch for the administration's point of view, whether or not the answer had anything to do with the actual question that was asked. And then: 'Thank you Jack. In other news today... '

And we're off on a whole new story.

Here's how Rather explained further:

In our news media, in our press, those who wield power were, in the lead-up to Iraq, given the opportunity to present their views as a coherent whole, to connect the dots, as they saw the dots and the connections... no matter how much these views may have flown in the face of precedent, established practice -- or, indeed, the facts (as we are reminded, yet again, by the just-released Senate report on the administration's use of pre-war intelligence). The powerful are given this opportunity still, in ways big and small, despite what you may hear about the "post-Katrina" press.

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.

He concluded: "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....

"The stakes could not possibly be higher. Scott McClellan's book serves as a reminder, and the current election season, not to mention the gathering clouds of conflict with Iran, will both serve as tests of whether lessons have truly been learned from past experience. Ensuring that a free press remains free will require vigilance, and it will require work."
*
Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. He is editor of Editor & Publisher.

Comments

[PoliticalAnimal]

We'll find the press is free enough as soon as a Democrat is in office. Then they'll find their balls and start asking tough questions again. Their taste for boot leather is very conservative ...

[Merlin7]

Funny, I don't remember Rather beating any drums for reform during those decades when he was a CBS anchor and rubbing elbows with CBS's top brass. Now, having safely retired, he periodically scolds his former colleagues for being too influenced by their parent corporations. But aside from this periodic cluck-clucking, Rather has few substantives ideas for improving the industry. How about coming out in favor of a new, government-funded news-gathering operation or a new panel, aside from the FCC, to oversee all TV and radio broadcasting? No? I didn't think so. Taking such strong positions might get Dan struck from the guest lists in Georgetown and on Martha's Vineyard -- oh, the horror!

[opines]

It is precisely the absense of conflicting sponsorship that accounts for the growth of the internet as a primary source of 'news' for citizens.

Internet contributors do not have concerns about issues they have before Federal agencies which might be adversely affected by an anti-administration account. Nor do they have to worry that such account might be adverse to their corporate bosses.

Network news is subject to many truth constraining factors the net effect of which is to make it an amen chorus for the military-industry complex ("M-IC"). One area where investigative reporting is all but suffocated is where matters of 'national security' or the size of Pentagon budgets are involved.

A perpetual 'War on Terror' reinforces and provides cover for network M-IC bias.

[RoloTomassi]

BILL MOYERS = one of the last Great American Journalists

View this program and understand that Bill Moyers had the media on the ropes a full year before McClellan's book and the MSM's recent completely dishonset self-approval of their dire and disgusting coverage of the war in Iraq:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

[rovezaleeker]

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes were set up beautifully by the Karl Rove slime machine and they both fell into the corpulent pasty faced troll's trap.

[Grulg]

Good post. We need more .

[outnow]

There is a culture of deception in the government where there is a deferentially complicit media. The repeal of media regulation was advanced by the commercial interests that profited from the Big Lies. Income equality is what it is all about. Healthy care, education and infrastructure are taking a back seat to multinational corporations lead by financial institutions. There are no limits for military spending. Capitalism must be tempered by concerns for social justice and equality. A prosperous, free society is based on a strong working class. To constantly drive down wages while maximizing CEO compensation is the goal of the consolidated media - entertainment is folded into propaganda that furthers corporate interests.

A thought firmly held can bring down an empire said Gandhi. Our Republic has been replaced by an empire built on influence being peddled in Washington by the financial elites. Can anyone seriously doubt that Bush is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of the multinationals who control the oil empire?

[magen]

"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."

-Dan Rather

This is the problem with ALL publicly traded companies.

We need to get rid of the system of-

It's all good as long as the quarterly bottom line is in the black no matter who gets effed.

[lysistrata]

Watch "Democracy Now" and compare.

[belikejeanvaljean]

As I have said before, this is why I watch Frontline (among other shows) on PBS.

[ignrnthllblly]

The romanticizing about the virtues of a free press in this country all derive from colonial times and the first 75 years of the nation, when every voice was independent and the news was not treated as a product to be merchandised. When I read, as I have even this morning in my local paper, about these virtues being projected onto the distant corporation which owns it, I am disgusted because I know that such myth-making will find a significant audience--just as I know that the self-serving demogoguery filling its pages will be hungrily ingested and then regurgitated as if it is the thoughtful opinion of a readership kept fearful and angry.

Even were it possible to divest American media from the small cluster of corporations which control it--and even were the Fairness Doctrine reinstated-- the illiteracy-inducing effect of television will still pave the way toward national idiocy. The value of a free press is made nil in the absence of a literate and discriminating populace.

[Clairvaux]

The Fairness Doctrine MUST be reinstated.

Anti-trust laws MUST be applied to the corporate media.

Beyond that, I agree that "the illiteracy-inducing effect of television will still pave the way toward national idiocy." Well stated! Television is a form of mind control; no question about it.

But then you have the internet. It is interactive and participatory. People who read the blogs and respond with their comments are engaged. They read. They write. They think. The forces of darkness in this country hate the internet and see it as a threat. Rightly so.

The internet will forge a new type of democracy. The internet will help us create a planetary consciousness. We must keep the internet free.

[InofTouch]

sooner or later is just going to be the same.