Hugh Hewitt, CBS Speechwriter

Ever read a counter-factual essay? Those enjoyable "what ifs" like "If the South Had Won the Civil War," Niall Ferguson's "Virtual History" or Patrick Hynes' chilling novel of the Gore Presidency "At Any Price" (chapter one hosted at CrushKerry; link via KerryHaters)? Well lawyer/pundit/blogger Hugh Hewitt joined the party in the Weekly Standard with "the speech CBS's president Les Moonves needs to give":

I am not firing Andrew Heyward, Dan Rather, or Mary Mapes, though Heyward is no longer CBS News president and Dan's not our anchor anymore. These three, and a few others involved in this meltdown, have been given an assignment to produce a one-hour special detailing what happened. It is scheduled to run in two weeks. I will review it before it airs. If it doesn't answer every question, then that will be the end of some fine CBS careers. I am not interested in retribution. I am interested in reputation. Ours is toast, and it deserves to be.

According to Hugh, here's how CBS should see the market:

Fox News is a fine news organization, and if you haven't figured that out yet, you are in denial. They owned the Swift Boat story because we were sniffing about the fact that this or that didn't seem appropriate to us. They owned the Republican convention because people trust Hume. I'd hire him tomorrow to anchor but he won't come. So get over this "Fox News is a right-wing carnival" crap.

Get over everything in fact. Start following the news again instead of filtering it. If you aren't fair, pretend to be. We are all out of business if we don't stop the bleeding.

I hope Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi are reading. Still, I'll bet the mainstream media keeps on filtering. And so, eventually, they'll be extinct.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.