Anchor shakeup is cause and effect

Choosing sides can be a bracing experience, but the reflexive partisan strife that now colors every discussion of the American news media obscures far more than it clarifies. The presumption of bad faith and conspiratorial deceit is now a given in many, if not most, criticisms of the media. In such an atmosphere, it can be difficult to maintain a grip on even homey, functional little principles, like cause and effect.

Take, for example, the bizarre combination of mirth and mourning surrounding this week’s retirement of Tom Brokaw as anchorman of NBC’s nightly newscast and the recent announcement that Dan Rather will vacate his chair at CBS in March.

On the one side there are those who insist on seeing Brokaw and Rather not as a couple of well-heeled pensioners but as symbols of the now vanishing -- and irretrievable -- grandeur that was network news. In this schema, one supposes that circumstances now confer on ABC’s Peter Jennings that peculiar sepia-tinged nobility American sentimentality reserves for the inevitably doomed -- kind of like Ishi, living out his days at the Berkeley anthropology museum, or that last passenger pigeon lingering for years in the Cincinnati Zoo’s aviary.

On the other side are the gleeful antagonists of their own great Satan, what has come to be called mainstream media. For them, the networks are both technological dinosaurs and archetypes of the liberal elitism now being battered into rubble by a right-of-center populism that has found its most perfect expression in the democratic new media, particularly Internet blogs. They hold the decline and fall of network news as a foregone conclusion, but they take particular pleasure in Rather’s departure, which they attribute to the scandal into which he tumbled during the presidential campaign.

As you will recall, that involved his broadcast of a “60 Minutes” segment that attacked President Bush’s military service on the basis of documents a kid reporter would have spotted as frauds.

This disgrace, and not the fact that the guy is 72 and has been in his job for 24 years, must be the cause of his retirement. More to the point, it was the bloggers -- some of whom raised questions about the documents’ authenticity within hours of the broadcast -- who brought Dan down.

Support from O’Reilly

Even his defenders seem to accept this proposition. Certainly, that was the case with the unlikeliest of them: Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who used his syndicated newspaper column this week to make an unequivocal case for Rather’s personal integrity. That point was fairly and convincingly made. Then, there was the rest of the column, which began:

“The ordeal of Dan Rather goes far beyond the man himself. It speaks to the presumption of guilt that now rules the day in America. Because of a ruthless and callow media, no citizen, much less one who achieves fame, is given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations or personal attacks. The smearing of America is in full bloom.”

O’Reilly went on to argue that while Rather’s critics are entitled to their political views -- a rather minimal admission coming from somebody who cashes a Fox paycheck -- they are not entitled “to practice character assassination or deny the presumption of innocence. Dan Rather was slimed.”

According to the Fox News personality, “All famous and successful Americans are now targets. Unscrupulous people know that any accusation can be dumped on the Internet and within hours the mainstream media will pick it up. It will be printed in the papers, discussed on radio and TV and become part of the unfortunate person’s resume whether he or she is guilty or not. A click of the Internet mouse can wipe out a lifetime of honor and hard work.”

Now, given the fact that O’Reilly himself recently was forced to buy his way free of a nasty sexual harassment allegation, the psychoanalytically inclined may detect a degree of projection here. But on a more mundane plane -- you know, that one where most of us live and things like cause and effect still prevail -- the question remains: Is this really what happened?

No.

Network news divisions are business units of sprawling corporate conglomerates. In CBS’ case, that company is Viacom. When it comes to emotions and honor and reputations, these people are flat-liners. In fact, the only line they recognize is the one at the bottom of the balance sheet. In that context, the relevant things about Dan Rather are not words but numbers.

For example, for more years than anybody at CBS cares to remember, the nightly newscast he anchored has run dead last among viewers. Every one of those missing ratings points was another plank in the coffin. If there was a final nail, it probably was forged on election night, a kind of Super Bowl of television news.

It had been more than four decades since any general election gripped the American public’s attention in the way this one did. More than eight out of every 10 voters said they followed the contest between George Bush and John Kerry closely and of that group, 82% said television was their primary source of news. Nearly 85% of the Americans who cast a ballot said they closely followed the returns on election night and fully 97% of that group said they watched television news to do so. In fact, interest was so keen that 51% of the voters said they watched television news past midnight.

So where did the CBS coverage, which Rather anchored, rank? Dead last among the broadcast networks, all three of which finished behind Fox and CNN. Just 9% of those who cast ballots relied on CBS for their news, barely ahead of MSNBC, which was watched by 6%.

Rather is not losing his job over scandal or Internet calumny. As the essayist and social critic Joseph Epstein wrote this week, at most, “by catching him out in shoddy journalistic practice, [the bloggers] cost Dan Rather an honorable departure from a long career.”

That career ended because, at the end of the day, nobody was watching.