Via CableNewser – Rather Signs Off: Amid “A Particularly Trying Time For CBS News”
On Dan Rather’s final broadcast, Dan Rather will briefly talk to viewers about the end of his tenure, the AP’s David Bauder reports. “It is a particularly trying time for CBS News and the CBS Evening News, ” EP Jim Murphy says. “We would just like to do our jobs well and have our work graded on the strength of the newscast. This sideshow that is going on with the media who want to have fun picking on Dan … It’s not good and it’s not fun for us.”
RatherGate was not about “picking on Dan”, Mr. Murphy. No, the controversy was born from a job NOT well done, and CBS was graded. You got an “F”. Come to grips with it, and most of all, learn from it. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Rebuild the culture at CBS News so it will be impossible for it to happen again. Only then will CBS regain the credibility it once had.
Over at Slate, Jack Shafer is giving out advice:
If they continue to play by the current set of evening news rules, they’re destined to to lose,” Shafer writes. “Unless they want future news archaeologists to find them frozen alive in pack ice, they need to stop thinking about who is going to be their next anchor and start changing the news environment. Without subscribing to his news values, they need to ask themselves, What would Rupert Murdoch do?”
Yeee-ouuuuch.