Fear and intimidation in the production houses

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather and HBO documentary producer Sheila Nevins spoke at a panel on journalism at the Fordham University School of Law yesterday. Rather complained that since he began he career:

politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a "new journalism order."

He said this pressure -- along with the "dumbed-down, tarted-up" coverage, the advent of 24-hour cable competition and the chase for ratings and demographics -- has taken its toll on the news business. "All of this creates a bigger atmosphere of fear in newsrooms."

Nevins argued that a similar atmosphere constrains the production of documentaries, arguing that:

...even in the documentary world, there's a certain kind of intimidation brought to bear these days, particularly from the religious right.

"If you made a movie about (evolutionary biologist Charles) Darwin now, it would be revolutionary," Nevins said. "If we did a documentary on Darwin, I'd get a thousand hate e-mails."

When he was asked to compare the pressure journalists now face from government to those he faced as a critic of the Nixon administration, the main difference that rather observed was that he felt that in the earlier period, his employers supported him.