Dan Rather, calls for Government Media.

Cartoon: Cox and Forkum.

I have on a number of occasions reported on the difficulties some of the mainstream media are finding themselves in with bankruptcies and falling revenues. I have on some of those occasions made the point that this is caused in no small part by the public losing confidence in the media because of blatant political bias:

There is a tendency among commentators to blame the current economic problems for this situation, along with the growing influence of the Internet. I have to note though that in many of these reports, including this one that there is reference to the last couple of years, note: - Revenue has fallen more than 20 percent since 2006.

There is another probable cause in my opinion, and that is that they have lost touch with the public at large, and have in the last election cycle seriously pissed off a fairly large proportion of their readers. ……. While in the past media have often favored one or another party, in the last election there was blatancy about it.

Few people are so biased as to be angered at reporting of things that may harm their parties chances, we all make mistakes, our candidates are the same, and when these are reported most of us are intellectually honest enough to accept that, “That was a stuff up.” Problems arise though when there is a constant bombardment of negatives toward one side while nothing but positive news is reported on the other. If media constantly beat one side of the spectrum around the heads, those people stop buying those papers.

Probably one of the clearest indications of the sad demise of the standards of the media is the latest offering from Dan Rather. Dan you see feels that “traditional journalism is under siege” and that media reform should become an “immediate national priority,” as well as claiming that “a democracy and free people cannot thrive without a fiercely independent press.”

Waxing lyrical, he went on to claim; “A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom. This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.”

In a somewhat ironic twist he railed about what he called, “the erosion of quality journalism, because of the corporatization, politicization, and “trivialization” of news. Those three factors, Rather argued, have fueled the “dumbing down and sleazing up of news” and the decline of “great American journalism.”

Dan, you see was the liberal hack who presented a Four Corners episode on Bush’s service record just prior to the 04 election, which was intended to discredit Bush and put Kerry into the White House. In order to achieve this the program produced documents that were so badly forged, (or as CBS says, “unable to be verified,”) that live thread bloggers had published the inconsistencies prior to the end of the show.

After this he still has the gaul to criticize online blogging and reporting, because of what he sees as their lack of accountability. Yeah, right.

And most bizarre of all, in his quest for what he calls, “A fiercely independent press without which democracy and free people cannot thrive,” he wants President Obama to establish a commission on public media and independent reporting.

After all, how can an industry be truly independent and adhere to the truth without the government there to guide it. (Just kidding.)