What's Ailing CBS News? Let's Make a Not-So-Little List

Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn't be that hard to fix.

Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News, even though I was unceremoniously shown to the door there nearly 20 years ago in a tumultuous change of corporate management.

But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC.

This week, when CBS News announced that four employees would lose their jobs in connection with the George Bush National Guard story, I was struck by how the network had become representative of a far larger, far more troubling problem: A large swath of the society doesn't trust the news media. And for many, it's even stronger than that: They abhor the media and perceive it as an escalating threat to the society.

If it's not stopped, the erosion of a centrist organizing principle for the media will soon become a commercial issue. Partisans will increasingly seek their news from blogs and websites and advocacy publications. And the majority -- those readers and viewers most comfortable in the center -- will try to find something

This will not be a problem initially for many big-city newspapers that both lead and reflect their liberal constituencies. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post are all pretty much in sync with their hometown sentiments. But there are problems looming for these papers. As the middle class surges into the new exurbia, those liberal and sectarian perceptions will not travel well from the city to the outskirts. Suburban papers, far more attuned to the local sentiments, will be able to seize upon disaffection with the city sophisticates.

Television's situation is even more stark. There are now true alternatives to the major network news programs. An English-style partisanship is burgeoning on the tube. Don't like those libs on CBS News? Go to the conservatives on Fox. Find NBC News too "centrist"? Click to ABC News or CNN. Can't stand Rush Limbaugh and his bombastic conservatism? Head for the liberal alternative, National Public Radio. Find them all heavy-handed oafs? Go to the "news" with Jon Stewart and his merrymakers.