Posted Thursday, September 13th 2012 @ 6am by Jim Forsyth
The President of CBS News told the Greater Chamber’s annual Economic Outlook Conference that claims by conservatives that his network, and the rest of what has derisively been labeled as the ‘mainstream media’ are simply ‘labels’ and David Rhodes said those labels ‘don’t stick.’
“We still have millions of people coming to these broadcasts, and a great day for me is when we take incoming from both sides about how we handled a story,” Rhodes told 1200 WOAI’s Michael Board.
In fact, Rhodes said CBS is a beacon of unbiased news.
“I think, frankly, one of the great things about working with Scott (Pelley, the new main anchor of the CBS Evening News) since we elevated him, is that nobody really knows where he is, and that is so rare in this environment.”
Rhodes said he and his management team are ‘constantly diligent’ to make sure labels of bias, “and they are labels, don’t stick.”
Rhodes acknowledged that there is a concern about bias in the mainstream media that has resulted in the creation of competing news networks.
“Fox was built into a great franchise because many people in this country don’t trust, or just plain don’t like, the other options,” he said.
(snip)
“In a lot of these things it is how the question is framed,” he said. “If you ask people, they probably have a visceral reaction to one type of media, and that’s what is being pulled out. But if you ask them whether they ‘feel informed,’ or ‘consider themselves informed,’ I think they would say that they are.”
(snip)
“We don’t micro target, we don’t say, we need to do certain things to reach this type of viewer, 35 year olds living in these counties, you can’t do that,” he said. “If it is a really good story, well told, you’ll get people.”
He said CBS is trying to remain a ‘mass media,’ at a time when narrowcasting over platforms from The Comedy Show to Facebook is becoming popular.
“If people have that worry, I think that is misplaced,” he said. “There is actually more news coverage today, more sources, more source material, information moves faster than ever before. I don’t think there should be some longing for ‘the good days’ of information. There is more of it now, and more of it is generally better.”
CBS News President: Seriously, We’re Not Biased
By Matthew Sheffield | September 13, 2012
(snip)
Despite his proclamations of his network’s fairness, Rhodes seemed aware that many do not believe in the objectivity of the self-styled mainstream press:
“Fox was built into a great franchise because many people in this country don’t trust, or just plain don’t like, the other options,” he said.
That remark is interesting because Rhodes actually used to work at Fox News. According to Crain’s New York Business, he oversaw FNC’s coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, despite the fact that his brother, Ben, was working for the Obama campaign. That’s a point that the Fox haters are likely never to acknowledge as a contrasting point to the fact that George W. Bush’s cousin John Prescott Ellis worked for the channel as a consultant during the 2000 presidential campaign. Could it be that Fox News actually isn’t the pure Republican propaganda platform of liberal imagination? Perish the thought!