For decades the broadcasts news' (like all media outlets') dirty litle secret is that it is ratings driven... or to put a finer point on it... the broadcast news outlets are whores... they spin a story desined to get them ratings... ratings means more advertising dollars and making money is the goal of the media.
But the news also had news men (and the occassional woman) that went beyond being mere reporters, such as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather (pre-2004 election), who did their own research, wrote their own stories and understood the developments in the world beyond the distilled sound bites released on the networks news.
The network (and cable news) is packaged as entertainment and people like CBS's Moonves are entertainment executives first and foremost.
Dan Rather is correct when he said Moonves dumbed down the news when Katie Couric took the anchor spot at CBS. But he is correct from his perspective, he remembers his career prior to 2004 when the news anchor meant more than being a talking head. But it wasn't that long prior when Connie Chung was added (and subsequently removed) as co-anchor in a failed attempt by the network to appeal to women... and why the urgency to appeal to women?... to get higher ratings.
But Dan Rather outlasted the rest of the news anchors who did more than smile and read the TelePromptR... when he finally stepped down in disgrace for not checking the facts of a story and being so excited about this scoop he failed to recognize a purportedly 30 year old document was done on a computer he was a figurative dinosaur... and CBS's ratings were suffering because of it.
Dan Rather remember the days when the station's anchor was the real head of the news department... when stations would run stories past their anchor for decsions on what to run and how to spin it... now the "Big 3" run the stories and put the spin with the hopes of getting the best ratings... instead of checking with their anchor they run it past Nielson or Arbitron.
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