For those who have seen Good Night, and Good Luck (you should if you haven't, cigarette smoke looks really cool in black-and-white), the themes of Dan Rather's scathing twenty-minute speech on the media at the National Conference for Media Reform over the weekend should seem familiar. Rather's criticisms were in the context of the media's complacency in the run-up to the war in Iraq, but his targets, as the Observer summarizes, are numerous: "media consolidation, the corporate news environment, 'message discipline,' media cowardice, news-for-profit, celebrity fluff, 'so-called human interest stories,' sensational trials, gossip, 'news you can use,' [and] partisan shouting matches." In other words: everything. But we're with you, Dan. Those sensational stories, celebrity fluff, and gossip belong on the blogs, where no journalistic standards are expected or offered. Speaking of which, did you hear Austrian incest girl's daughter came out of her coma? —Dan Amira

At Reform Conference, Dan Rather Catalogues the 'Journalistic Sins' of Corporate Media [NYO]