A former president of CBS News adds his two bits to the discussion of their credibility crisis (emphasis added):
What’s the big problem at CBS News?
Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn’t be that hard to fix.
Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News, even though I was unceremoniously shown to the door there nearly 20 years ago in a tumultuous change of corporate management.
But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC.
Sour grapes from a disgruntled former employee or a unique insight from somebody in a position to know things the rest of us don’t? We report, you decide. Link via Jeff Jarvis.
And here’s Krauthammer’s take on CBS News:
This is not an isolated case. In fact the case is a perfect illustration of an utterly commonplace phenomenon: the mainstream media’s obliviousness to its own liberal bias.
I do not attribute this to bad faith. I attribute it to (as Marx would say) false consciousness — contracted by living in the liberal media cocoons of New York, Washington and Los Angeles, in which any other worldview is simply and truly inconceivable. This myopia was most perfectly captured by Pauline Kael’s famous remark after Nixon’s 1972 landslide: “I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”
Sounds about right to this biased observer – false consciousness it is.