Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 1 Editor's Choice: 1
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Be the Witness
[Read the article: Dan Rather stands by his story]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I want clear insight that cuts through the media hype, I find Salon articles by Sidney Blumenthal always enlightening, especially the one he wrote today about Dan Rather and his lawsuit against CBS over his firing and suppression of his report on Bush’s National Guard service. I’ve lived long enough to have seen the rise and fall of Dan Rather, and well remember how he became the target for Republican darts.
And I also remember growing up with the unquestioned belief that the evening news was the truth, in the same way that the Sunday sermon was the truth. The news anchor was our anchor to God’s truth, and it was only this single tether that kept us from drowning in a sea of conflicting opinions. The news anchor reflected our own inner witness who stood back from the ego and its passions and kept us grounded in our highest nature. The news anchor represented our conscious and our soul in the collective mind that is our society. We trusted him.
But the takeover of the news media by corporations is like the take over of the soul by the ego, and now what is true is what is good for the ego. This is Rather’s complaint, warning, and final story. Like Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite before him, his mentors, Rather’s last stand is not about reporting but about the ability to tell the difference between the real and the unreal. If there is no impartial witness, can we ever tell the difference? And if we can’t tell the difference between the real and the unreal, then we have lost our golden thread to God and our salvation. We drown in violence, confusion, and dread, and there is no one to throw us a rope.