'Dan Rather: Unleashed' = Evils of 'Huge Conglomerate' Owning All the News

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As if anyone would be interested in Dan Rather being “unleashed,” Tuesday's edition of the IFC Media Project, a weekly far-left show that presumes the media are biased to the right, featured Rather whining about too much entertainment in news and blaming “the big, huge international conglomerate that now owns so many of the news outlets” for bringing American journalism to “a crisis point” -- not his own embarrassing political hit job on President Bush based on forged documents -- for blocking “investigative” journalism.

After offering the trite banality that “investigative reporting, finding out what people in power don't want the public at large to know and disseminating it, is one of the most important roles of journalism,” Rather argued:

It causes trouble because the big, huge international conglomerate that now owns so many of the news outlets, they have special needs in Washington. They are asking for favors, these people, needing favors -- regulatory, legislative needs -- of the very people that good investigative reporters would be digging into and exposing.

Part of the "Dan Rather: Unleashed" commentary on the December 2 edition of the IFC Media Project on the Independent Film Channel:

Investigative reporting, finding out what people in power don't want the public at large to know and disseminating it, is one of the most important roles of journalism in its role as the so-called Fourth Estate. And investigative reporting has gone badly out of fashion. The trend line is against it.

There are reasons. The reasons: It takes longer, it's more expensive than other kinds of coverage, and it causes trouble because the big, huge international conglomerate that now owns so many of the news outlets, they have special needs in Washington. They are asking for favors, these people, needing favors -- regulatory, legislative needs -- of the very people that good investigative reporters would be digging into and exposing, if you will. And this comes in conflict.

I think it's one reason, that it's not too strong to say, that American journalism today is at a crisis point. We either are going to steady ourselves, get back to basics, the basics of what our role in a system of government such as ours is and should be, or we're going to continue this slide downward where news and entertainment are undistinguishable.

Update 17:33 | Matthew Sheffield. One wonders to what degree Rather will repeat this line of thought during the Obama years. During Democratic presidencies, Rather's interest in investigative journalism at the highest levels of government has typically been quite low.