Man Who Did Most to Discredited Media Tries Saving It

It's been awhile since we had the opportunity to pick on Dan Rather. Oh how I've pined for those days when he was making up stories about Bush and then showing his true character by throwing his producer under the bus. You recall, don't you? He pushed faux military docs on us and when busted stuck with his story until CBS had to boot his ass out like a tumble weed across a Texas prairie.

Now Dan is trying to regain some fame as the savior of the news business:

You don't have to care about media companies or reporters to care about the state of the news, because if it's in trouble - and it surely is - this country is in trouble. That's why I recently called on President Obama to form a commission to address the perilous state of America's news media.

Perhaps The One can appoint a News Czar to go with all the other czars he's appointed. And damn, they've all been so successful too.

Some might scoff at the notion that a president and a country occupied by two wars and a recession should add the woes of the news media to a crowded plate. But the way the news is delivered, and the quality of the information the public gets about what's going on here and abroad, have and will continue to have a profound effect on these issues and the overall quality of government.

Profound indeed. July was the bloodiest month in Afghanistan since the war started in 2001 and no one in the media has had the balls to ask Obama about it. If it had been Bush, every single death would have been laid directly at his feet. But the media has had a tremendous effect on the quality of government and the current quality blows.

I am not calling for any government bailout for media companies. Nor am I encouraging any government control over them. I want the president to convene a nonpartisan, blue-ribbon commission to assess the state of the news as an institution and an industry, and to make recommendations for improving and stabilizing it.

Yeah, we know how those non-partisan, blue-ribbon commissions always seem to solve problems. They're kind of like the UN in that regard. I for one will make a suggestion for stabilizing media companies; tell them to quit being partisan hacks and kissing Obamas ass on a daily basis (or bowing in the case of Brian Williams)

Why bring the president into it? Because it's the only way I could think of to generate the sort of attention the subject deserves. Academia and think tanks generate study after study, yet their findings don't reach the people who need to be reached.

Academia is about the only portion of this country further left than the media, they should help things out magnificently.

We need a broad public discussion of the role news is meant to play in our system of government and a better public understanding of the news infrastructure's fragile condition. We need to know how things got this way and what we need to change.

Things got this way because the media decided they were going to choose sides and not report the news straight. It was Rather, Brokaw and Peter Jennings who were the main cause of the decline in respect and trust of the media. They bent over backwards portraying Reagan as a buffoon and W. as a bloodthirty redneck.

...We need news that breeds understanding, not contempt; that fosters a healthy skepticism of power, rather than a paralyzing cynicism. We need the basic information that a self-governing people requires. The old news model is crumbling, while the Internet, for all its immense promise, is not yet ready to rise in its place - and won't be until it can provide the nuts-and-bolts reporting that most people so take for granted that it escapes their notice.

"Nuts-and-bolts" reporting like that of Mary Mapes, Dan?

Perhaps Dan hasn't taken note of the good reporting happening on the Internet by people such as Gateway Pundit, Dan Riehl or the team at PJ Media. Dare I say that those organizations have...courage?