Rather vs. CBS

In a recent interview Dan Rather, former anchor for CBS Nightly News had the following critque of his former show:

"...I want to make clear that I have nothing against Katie Couric at all. She’s a very nice person and I have a lot of friends at CBS News. However, it was clear at the time and I think it has become even clearer that the mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ ethos to the evening news and to dumb it down, tart it up, in hopes of attracting a younger audience. And I just don't think that people at 6:30, or seven o’clock at night or even 5:30 in the central time zone , six o’clock when it’s seen, that that is what they want. This is a continuation of a trend that we've talked about before, Joe and Mika, and John, and that is the combination of what I call the corporatizing of the news has led to the trivializing of the news. If you notice, it isn’t just anybody's evening news. That the front page of the New York Times took space the other day to talk about, I know we don't mention her name, so I will call her Rome Marriott. This woman, Rome Marriott, Paris Hilton, on the front page of the Times. And then, today’s Washington Post has a big spread, a multi-column spread on the front page about celebrities. And the belief runs strong in the corporate towers of almost every news organization, print or over the airwaves these days, that if you go to celebrities, uh, it increases your audience. There is no empirical evidence to indicate that. But even if it were true, I think that those of us in journalism are going to have a lot to answer for when you put Paris Hilton on the front page and put developments and celebrities on the front page and put developments such as the splintering of the coalition of the Anbar Province in Iraq, which has been helpful to us, but is now splintering apart and the fact that, what, 12 or 13 people were blown up and killed at a police station on Tikrit, when you put the war on the inside pages and Paris Hilton and other celebrities on front pages, it tells you that we have got a lot to answer for in journalism."

So what was the CBS rebuttal? Rather's a sexist.

My opinion? I don't watch CBS, or any nightly news show, but I think Rather's statements in terms of the entire M$M is right on the money. Unfortunately, he still has a problem with his sources because I've never heard of Rome Marriott.