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Rather: We Must Take Over the Free Press in Order to Save It

Jimmie | July 30, 2009 | Comments (0)

When Dan Rather presses the panic button, he really doesn’t mess around, does he?

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather called on President Barack Obama to form a White House commission to help save the press in an emotional speech at the Aspen Institute. At stake, he argued, is the very survival of American democracy.

“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,” said Rather.

Well, okay. I like American democracy. It’s certainly better than Chinese Democracy and took less time to get here. I’m fond of my freedom of speech and religion and being able to choose my own health care, for now. I don’t want to see it’s heart ripped out like that unfortunate guy in the second Indiana Jones movie. I’m concerned.

So what do I do, Coach Dan? What’s the game plan?

“The free press, as established by the First Amendment to the Constitution, ought to operate as a public trust, not solely as a money-making endeavor,” Rather argued, “and it’s time the government made an effort to ensure the survival of the free press. If not the government, he suggested, then an organization like the Carnegie Foundation should take it on. Without action, he predicted, America will lose its independent media. If we do nothing more than stand back and hope that innovation alone will solve this crisis,” he said, “then our best-trained journalists will lose their jobs.”

Pennsylvania Gazette Um…Dan? Hell-oo? If it’s run by the government then it’s not “free”. That’s kind of the point of the First Amendment. See, when Washington takes over the press, it’ll end up falling under the purview of Congress, which will make laws outlining what it can and can’t do (because, well, it has to. That’s its job). That’s exactly the opposite of “Congress shall make no law…”.

But let’s look at the assumption that journalists will lose their jobs for a moment, can we? I mean, if we’re going to charge in and SAVE THE MEDIA, then maybe we should examine the danger they’re in. Gunga Dan says that the free press will crumble is journalists lose their jobs but that’s pure bunk. You won’t need a journalism job to be a journalist. The guys who started the whole free press thing — Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin for starters — didn’t rely on an established press for a job. They simply published any way they could find to do so. Paine got his big break self-publishing pamphlets. Franklin went out and started two newspapers of his own, one of them when he was 15 years old. The First Amendment has never been a guarantee of job security, just opportunity.

And, though Rather doesn’t like it, people are taking opportunities. Bloggers are filling the holes that newspapers are creating with their far too biased and shoddy reporting. As Rather might remember (but not too clearly lest he have a flashback and start muttering “fake but accurate” again like a Transcendental Meditation mantra), it was the free press of the blogosphere that uncovered the Bush TANG document fakery. There is plenty of room for aggressive journalists to start their own blogs, break their own stories, and make the best living they can with their own creativity, tenacity, skill, and chutzpah. Stacy McCain is making his way doing that very thing and plenty of other journalists can follow his path. It’s not easy, as I’m sure Stacy will readily confirm. They won’t have that nice, steady paycheck every two weeks and they’ll have to rattle whatever they decide to use as a tip jar. But they’ll be newshounds and isn’t that why journalists do what they do?

What Dan Rather really wants isn’t a free press but a comfortable press. He wants to be able to vex those he sees as powerful, but only from inside an established newsroom, with a regular paycheck, a cushy retirement plan, plenty of prestige, and twice-yearly awards dinners. The only problem with that is you can’t really “afflict the comfortable” if you’re comfortable yourself.