Tom Tradup is Vice President of News & Talk Programming for Dallas-based Salem Radio Network. He has written extensively on media for TOWNHALL.com and the Jerusalem news site All Israel News.
Two recent media stories—about the news industry—caught my eye over the weekend because, in their combined messaging, they say a lot about the sorry state of American journalism in 2024.
The first was a blaring headline in The Hollywood Reporter trumpeting: “DAN RATHER RETURNING TO CBS NEWS FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE BITTER EXIT 18 YEARS AGO.”
Rather—the native Texan who annoyed us for decades covering Election Night returns with hokey phrases like “Ronald Reagan is cutting through the middle of America like a hot knife through butter” and “The Senator’s tongue is wagging like a blind dog’s tail in a meat market,” eventually rose to become CBS’s White House correspondent and rudely confronting President Richard Nixon throughout the Watergate scandal.
(After Nixon addressed the American Newspaper Publishers Convention, Dan arose to announce he was “Dan Rather, CBS News” at which point the room erupted in thunderous applause. Nixon asked “Are you running for something, Mr. Rather?” to which the response was “No sir, Mr. President…are you?”)
That rude confrontation with a President of the United States (decades later honed to perfection by CNN’s Jim Acosta sparring with Donald J. Trump) was enough to propel Rather into the anchor seat on the CBS Evening News, along with the title “Managing Editor.” But under Rather’s “management,” the once-dominant network newscast slipped into third place in the national news ratings.
In 1986, Dan Rather was allegedly attacked on the streets of New York City by two thugs who reportedly asked “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” as they punched him out. Then in September 1987, Dan got peeved that CBS Sports coverage of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament ran past the start of his news broadcast, so he just yanked off his microphone and left the studio; CBS News affiliates around the nation were fed a black screen and dead air for six minutes.
The hits just kept on coming, and in 1993, CBS tried a ratings stunt by pairing Rather with Connie Chung as his co-anchor in a bid to turn around the former crown jewel of its news division. Viewers voted thumbs-down by tuning to other channels. And finally, in 2004, Rather and CBS News—at the height of President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign—ran a questionable story about Bush having gone AWOL while serving in the Texas National Guard.
(An independent investigation concluded that “fundamental journalistic principles” had been ignored by a CBS News producer and her “Managing Editor.” Rather departed CBS two years later.)
All this came rushing back to me as I read that Hollywood Reporter headline that Dan Rather was “returning to CBS News.” But, alas, like local TV newscasters teasing a cat stuck in a tree coming up after the weather, it turns out 92-year-old Dan wasn’t actually suiting up for the anchor desk again: he was just the subject of a puff piece on Jane Pauley’s CBS Sunday Morning program, recapping his career and hyping a new Netflix documentary about the guy who ended each CBS Evening News broadcast by staring into the camera and uttering the maudlin word “Courage.”
A second headline this weekend was the news that Poppy Harlow—co-captain of the cable TV version of White Star Lines Titanic when she set sail on the ill-fated CNN This Morning with Yeoman Purser Don Lemon and ship’s activity director Kaitlin Collins—will be departing CNN this week. (Full disclosure: Having tried dozens of times over the years with mixed success, I concede it is hard to “create chemistry” in broadcast teams. This one was doomed to be shipwrecked like the S.S. Minow as ratings continually sank and tempers and egos were on full display…but without the entertainment and class of professional wrestling.)
In a farewell e-mail to colleagues at CNN (later “leaked” to the media), Poppy Harlow disclosed that her immediate plans are to walk her children to school and pick them up each day. Oh, and “to support the evolution of journalism in every way I can, while preserving the humanity in it.” (Italics mine.)
What exactly would the “humanity” in today’s journalism be? Would it be folks like the insipid Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC—an alleged “news” network—introducing literally every story relating to Donald J. Trump by saying here’s the latest news “about-the-twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, found-liable-for-sexual- assault-and-facing-91-felony-counts-disgraced-former-President”?
Or is the “humanity” found in the Associated Press, which refused to cover the debut of This Week On The Hill, a weekly news program launched last month by Salem Media Group and featuring weekly appearances by Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, because—in AP’s pathetically comic response—”We do not normally write stories about news shows being launched by other organizations.”
As Executive Producer of TWOTH, I had to point out to AP executives that this isn’t like The Bachelor or a new season of Family Feud with Steve Harvey….it is a regularly scheduled news program with the man two heartbeats away from the presidency taking his agenda directly to the American people on radio without having it run through the deflavorizer of the AP, or MSNBC, and any other gatekeepers in what we laughingly refer to as journalism.
There was once a time in America when journalists were respected as truth-tellers and reliable sources of information. That was before so-called “advocacy” reporting reared its ugly head, and reporters were given the greenlight to inject their personal views into articles and broadcasts. Alas, no more “just the facts.”
Today it is open season on the truth. So now America’s strongest ally in the Middle East —Israel— is regularly portrayed in the media and in violent campus demonstrations as the aggressor taking on Hamas “freedom fighters.” (AKA the terrorists who rape hostages, behead teenagers, and burn babies alive.)
Hate to break it to Dan Rather and Poppy Harlow, but if playing fast and loose with the facts and sacrificing truth on the altar of political correctness is where the “evolution” of journalism is taking us, sorry. To quote Sam Walton, the dogs don’t like the food.
