Dan Rather: The News Americans Need

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703183.html

The News Americans Need

By Dan Rather
Sunday, August 9, 2009


You don't have to care about media companies or reporters to care about the state of the news, because if it's in trouble -- and it surely is -- this country is in trouble. That's why, while speaking recently at the Aspen Institute, I called upon President Obama to form a commission to address the perilous state of America's news media.

Some might scoff at the notion that a president and a country occupied by two wars and a recession should add the woes of the news media to an already crowded plate. But the way the news is delivered, and the quality of the information the American public receives about what's going on here and abroad, has and will continue to have a profound effect on these very issues and on the overall quality of government by, for and of the people.

I am not calling for any sort of government bailout for media companies. Nor am I encouraging any form of government control over them. I want the president to convene a nonpartisan, blue-ribbon commission to assess the state of the news as an institution and an industry and to make recommendations for improving and stabilizing both.

Why bring the president into it? Because this is the only way I could think of to generate the sort of attention this subject deserves. Academia and think tanks generate study after study, yet their findings don't reach the people who need to be reached.

We need a real and broad public discussion of the role news is meant to play in our democratic system of government and a better public understanding of the American news infrastructure's fragile condition. We need to know how things got this way and what we need to change.

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We need news that breeds understanding, not contempt; news that fosters a healthy skepticism of the workings of power rather than a paralyzing cynicism. We need the basic information that a self-governing people requires. The old news model is crumbling, while the Internet, for all its immense promise, is not yet ready to rise in its place -- and won't be until it can provide the nuts-and-bolts reporting that most people so take for granted that it escapes their notice.

This is a crisis that, with no exaggeration, threatens our democratic republic at its core. But you won't hear about it on your evening news, unless the message can be delivered in a way that corporate media have little choice but to report -- such as, say, the findings of a presidential commission.