It’s been more than a week since CBS announced – at the behest of its owner, Viacom, I am sure - that it would not run a story on the Administration’s efforts to sell the war on Iraq. The segment was supposed to lead an edition of "Sixty Minutes." If I remember correctly, they said they would not run it because it might influence the election.
Wow! And here I thought news was supposed to influence elections.
Obviously, in the wake of Dan Rather’s stupid misuse of probably phony memos to reawaken a very old story – how idiotic can you get? - this is Viacom covering its corporate derriere. Sumner Redstone, the company’s boss, did the same recently when he endorsed George W. Bush.
So, as Bob Dole used to ask, "Where’s the outrage?"
Where are all those folks who call themselves conservatives, presumably because they revere the Constitution, a document containing the First Amendment? (I know it forbids only government interference, not corporate, with the press, but still…..)
Where are all the so-called media critics? They were quick enough to condemn CBS when Rather blundered. Where are they now?
Fact is, the major broadcast news operations are either White House loyalists (Fox) or fearful of the White House (ABC, CBS, NBC). And PBS still hides behind an its "objective" stance so as not to imperil the federal dollars it still relies upon.
Further, the newspapers, which used to do media criticism of TV when that industry was young, have largely abandoned it now that they own or are owned by TV stations or have working agreements with local TV.
What media oversight we get comes from ombudsmen - found at the Washington Post, the New York Times and a few other serious newspapers - or syndicated columnists. But the columnists tend to be ideologically committed (John Leo) or GOP apparatchiks (Linda Chavez).
The Internet carries lots of "media criticism," of course, but it is not yet a mass medium.
We need regular criticism of news mediums in our daily newspapers.