Is CBS News the Next Enron?

From where I sit this week, knowing what I know today about CBS and Dan Rather's "Memogate", I'd say it's entirely possible that the whole CBS News empire could instantly implode the way that Enron and Arthur Andersen did.

A few years ago, in the roaring 90's stock market environment, Enron and Arthur Andersen were giants in their respective fields. Enron in the energy business, Arthure Anderson in the accounting realm. Both almost untouchable mega companies with thousands of employees. Today they are both gone. Zilch. Nada. Game over.

How could the mighty fall so fast? Simple malfeasance. They lost the public trust because of substantial and unquestionable improprieties perpetrated by their leadership. Although Enron's business was energy, trust was the basis of it's stock value and when that disappeared so did it's net worth. And if you can't trust an accounting firm like Arthur Anderson, how can they stay in businees? They couldn't and their disappearance was lightning fast.

Were all of the thousands of employees guilty? Of course not. Many fine people found themselves suddenly, unimaginably, on the street because of the reckless behavior of a few at the top.

And so we find ourselves at this moment in time with CBS News. A network news division's coin is credibility. If that is substantially undermined in this information age where the consumer has literally thousands of choices for news sources you're dead. Pure and simple. You may as well put up the test pattern. It's over. And clearly that's the fate that Dan Rather and his staff of producers have brought upon the Tiffany Network. They attempted a poorly crafted hit piece on a sitting President's re-election bid using easily detected forged documents and it will cost them dearly in credibility. My prediction is that it's a fatal blow and CBS News will join the shame list with Enron and Arthur Andersen.

And who will have brought them down? The bloggers in the blogosphere that the network elitists disdain. Memo to the elitists: you can sneer at us bloggers as unaccountable nuisances writing "in their pajamas in their living room", as former CBS exectutive Johnathan Klein said on Fox News network this week. But don't tempt the blogosphere. We're legion and we're ruthlessly effective at correcting error.

Although I had no role in this seismic media event other than being a normal contributor to FreeRepublic.com on occasion, I have to say it:

I'm proud to be a blogger.