When I was a much younger man with delusions of grandeur, I wanted, more than anything else, to be a White House correspondent for one of the Big Three networks. The ABC News theme was on my playlist, and had ringtones been a thing at the time, I would have made it mine. I idolized Peter Jennings and yearned desperately to be the guy in the trench coat, dusted with snow, outside the White House or the Capitol, delivering the daily dose of unbiased, hard-hitting journalism to the people.
At one point, my poor, sweet misbegotten younger self sent writing samples and airchecks to ABC, CBS, NBC, and NPR in the altogether vain hope of landing a spot in the White House press corps. I would have been content to be one of the “rabble in the gaggle,” shouting questions at the press secretary or even the president, God willing. Of course, none of my submissions were even acknowledged. What was I thinking? Who in their right mind at any of these hallowed institutions would have taken the time to even look through the samples and airchecks from a news director from a radio station in the Middle of Nowhere, Utah?
In retrospect, I probably got the long end of that deal. I would have eventually been weeded out as a fifth columnist who wasn’t willing to toe the party line and offer up propaganda as news and incendiary innuendo as information. And since I would never have been a network name, I would not have even been able to host a podcast or a Substack where my few remaining fans could have availed themselves of my opinions. I would not have been making the regular rounds on Breitbart as a former left-wing celebrity who clings to the vaporous hope that someone still cares about what they have to say.
In short, I never got to go to “The Show,” but I managed to keep my integrity and soul intact.
Comes now Dan Rather, the former anchor and face of CBS News. Recently, Rather took to his Substack to don ashes and sackcloth and enlist a Greek chorus to bemoan the fact that Bari Weiss is going to helm the news at CBS. To hear Rather tell it, under Weiss’s aegis, CBS will become little more than a mouthpiece for the MAGA agenda:
Rather than doing their jobs as sentinels of democracy, who independently cover the news and hold the powerful accountable, they now have to be concerned about how their pitches, their stories, and their scripts will be received by someone with a clear political agenda. They will be dogged by worry that anything they do, any question they ask, will be scrutinized to ensure that it suits the political powers.
Anything that runs afoul of Trump’s agenda may be flagged and is unlikely to be aired unaltered, if aired at all. No journalist or their work can remain unaffected by toiling in such an environment.
The ones who remain at CBS will work hard and do the best they can under the circumstances. But they now are being forced to deal daily with this new reality. (sic)
To underscore the gravity of the situation, Rather concludes:
It is a dark day in the halls of CBS News, where the portraits of television news pioneers once hung — Cronkite, Murrow, Sevareid, Collingwood. They were journalists who made television a trusted source of information. Whom and what are we to believe today?
Who are we to believe? Never mind that Rather had his own High Noon showdown with a false report about George W. Bush’s military record. Never mind the fact that the legacy media has fully committed itself to a Progressive agenda.
Yesterday, Mrs. Brown and I returned from a much-needed vacation, during which we explored the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Our hotel offered “breakfast” in the form of warmed-up Sysco chow, but it was free and not too horrible. The TVs were tuned to MSNBC, which offered up a steady stream of propaganda under the guise of news. If there were “another side” to these current events, one would have never known it from the angst-ridden deliveries of the anchors and their guests. We had to change tables a few times so I could digest my warmed-over sausages and eggs in peace. The anchors, hosts, and guests all presented their opinions and screeds under the auspices of “truth.”
But as Pontius Pilate asked of Jesus Christ, “What is truth?”
Had Pilate the wisdom or foresight to understand who the battered and bloodied man standing before him was, the conversation might have gone differently. Truth, as it turns out, is not comfortable. All too often, truth shows up naked, bloody, raw, and unsightly. Truth forces us to confront our own biases and our bitter, inner selves. Whether we are True-Blue or one of the MAGA faithful, truth should carry with it an essence that makes us uncomfortable and forces us to examine ourselves.
That said, while Rather, his contemporaries, and his media progeny may be dyed-in-the-wool leftists, it is not just the standard they bear that should give a rational person reason for pause.
I have often contended that the Pharisees in Jesus’s time had a difficult task. They had to balance the religious and cultural needs of the people with the diktats of the occupying forces of Rome. They had to walk a razor’s edge, so it is small wonder that an upstart from Galilee would make many of them nervous. Likewise, Pilate, whose life, political and otherwise, depended upon tenuous alliances in Rome, was tasked with overseeing a very difficult part of the Empire; one which, in 70 AD, tired of being a political pawn since at least the time of the Seleucids and Judas Maccabeus, would be effectively wiped off the face of the earth in the name of Pax Romana.
We might concede that the Pharisees and Pilate were children of their times and were at the mercy of forces beyond their control. And to a certain extent, they indeed were. But a contingent of the Pharisees enjoyed a lifestyle far better and more privileged than their countrymen. Pilate undoubtedly held aspirations beyond being the governor of Judaea. It should come as no surprise that they might take truth, current events, and public opinion, and shape those things to their will in the name of the “greater good.”
Which brings us to the darkest heart of Rather’s complaint and, for that matter, those who trail in his wake. It is not just their politics or their interpretation of the truth that is unsettling. It is that they are angry and affronted that they are no longer the gatekeepers, arbiters, and dispensers of the truth. Rather and his media scions are heavily invested in their version of the truth, not just financially, but emotionally as well. That they would be furious to lose that status should come as no surprise to anyone.
I have worked in various incarnations of the media throughout my life, and I have seen time and again how easy it is to subsume the mission to the man. We should not just be wary, but frightened of such people.
So at the end of all things, perhaps I was blessed not to be able to rub shoulders with Jennings, or Rather. To do so might have meant mortgaging my soul.
On the flip side: Bari, if you’re hiring, have your people call my people. We’ll do lunch, or sushi, or something.
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