CBS/Rather Flap

Open letter to the chattering class.

What's wrong with you cable news people?

I am amazed that a cable news show asking for one hour of my time, would devote 1 minute to the most recently beheaded person in Iraq, 1 minute to the unfortunate 1000+ who drowned in Haiti during Hurricane Jeanne, 1 minute to Scott Peterson and 50 minutes to CBS and Dan Rather. What's wrong with you cable news people? How can you be getting your importance in the world so wrong? Whether Rather stays or goes, whether CBS is guilty or not, whether CBS stays or goes or whether the whole news media as it is will stay or go, just isn't that big of a deal. Whether our country stays or goes, now that's a big deal, and if you news guys don't stop making everything about yourselves, you won't have any one to impress because your audience will be politically, if not literally, dead.

How astounding that you are unable to see the daily harm you do to this conceptually beautiful country. Until you can admit to yourselves, looking in the glass face-to-face, that you, each of you, is complicit in this war in Iraq and complicit in the deaths of all who have died there, you will not mature into professional newsmen.

Were you not, as the collective media, especially the cable media, wetting your pants over Gulf War II when you realized you, too, could make your names at the Baghdad hotel, or as an embed or as the nightly news reader who cranks out the middle of the night reports of missiles (hopefully, you think) sailing into Kuwait and maybe, with any luck, into Israel. Nothing could top those glory days when the Scud Stud stepped up to the plate and CNN cameras captured modern warfare's razzle-dazzle first hand, LIVE! No matter that it was David vrs Goliath. Imagine, we managed to win!! Ghouls.

Was it in the hopes of capturing those spontaneous news events from Gulf War I that you all so easily went along with, indeed, salivated over, this contrived, staged, totally bogus war in Iraq?
If there's one thing the CBS fiasco should teach the media, it's that we average pajama joes out here are paying attention. Those of us who were looking for ways to avoid war in Iraq found plenty of support months in advance of the invasion just looking closely at statements issued in newspapers, on CSPAN, in opposing view segments. That those tidbits of truth - no WMD, Saddam having no real army, defense contract giveaways and, most importantly no link to Bin Laden - were pushed aside and ignored in favor of the self interest of the news media and it's personal bent toward self-glorification has brought not only shame, but real, tangible harm to this country. Remember, a gilded lilly usually ends up dead and alas, me thinks your blooms are looking a bit withered as we speak.
Get off your high-horses and slog your way down the road to real journalistic truth - and that means ALL of you, not just Dan Rather.