By Don Irvine.
Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather has launched a new Facebook page to ferret out real news from what he considers to be the fake news that has proliferated since the election:
Please join me on an exciting new endeavor.
I love news. I always have and can confidently say I always will. Journalism, real journalism, deep-digging reporting without fear or favor, is as important now, if not more so, than any time I can remember.
Together, on this Facebook page, we have built a community that I know values real news. But there is only so much I can share and on which I can comment. Take a week like this week, where the news of the confirmation hearings is coming fast and furious. There are far more articles that deserve your attention and great reporters who I would love to spotlight.
I got into news in the first place to be part of something noble and bigger than myself. For those reasons, I am starting a second Facebook page called News And Guts, a digital news feed of sorts. It’s also the name of my digital news and production company. The goal is to inform, innovate, and inspire. This Facebook page will be under the stewardship of a very talented group of reporters who work at my company. These are men and women who know real news. They’ve reported with me around the globe from dangerous and difficult datelines. I trust them and so should you.
You may find the tone of the page a little more free-wheeling than mine but we also want this to be a two-way street. Share with us your thoughts or articles or stories you want us to cover.
In an era of fake news, false equivalence, and too much fluff, let’s take a stand together to demand better, and bring attention to all those doing great work. Please click here: News And Guts, give the page itself a like, and let’s jump into a new experiment.”
Rather makes it sound as if the new page will be fighting fake news and presenting only what his team considers to be real news. But in reality it is nothing but a page devoted to negative news about President Trump and his administration.
I scrolled through the entire page and there wasn’t a single positive story on anything the President and his administration have done—not one—just dozens of stories from the women’s march to every single controversy that the liberals have cooked up about the Trump administration.
In the “About” section of the page it says the following:
“Dan Rather has created a media company that promotes his vision of real journalism, news of integrity and as he would say a ‘play no favorites, pull no punches’ brand of reporting. News with guts. In these turbulent times, we seek nothing more than the truth.”
That’s pretty rich coming from a man who was responsible for a story about President George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service in 2004 that was proven false and led to Rather’s resignation from CBS, as well as a black eye for the network.
Maybe Rather would be a good arbiter of fake news, since he is a Godfather of it after all.
