Screen grab from the video.
Posted on 07/29/2004 2:34:34 PM PDT by RatherBiased.com
Appearing in a panel discussion of news anchors held at Harvard University earlier this week, Dan Rather defended himself against charges that he was liberally biased by quoting from a book by a left-wing media critic who also happened to be in the audience. After reciting some well-worn quotes from author Eric Alterman's book What Liberal Media?, Rather was almost scared out of his mind as someone from the audience called out "Give the source for that!"
"Uh," Rather stammered, afraid that he'd be outed as a reader of a left-wing book on national television, "Pat Buchanan."
"No," the audience member replied. "It's from my book, What Liberal Media?
Relieved, Rather gave an uneasy laugh but then tried to save face.
"Eric, it says here that it was the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Perhaps you quoted from the Guardian."
The discussion moved on but Rather, apparently did not. Feeling guilty that he might have offended a fellow liberal, the CBS anchor resurrected the topic.
"If I may, out of fairness and accuracy, I've double-checked now on that note and in fairness to our outspoken, and understandably so, author, I want to point out that when I said that quote, 'Kristol quote came from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, that the Pat Buchanan book may very well have come from your book. And I want to make note of that for accuracy because you didn't have the chance to respond to my smart-ass remark."
Following that, Rather nodded to Alterman and gave him a friendly salute.
There was lots more discussed at the Sunday session which was carried live by C-SPAN. See our partial transcript complete with commentary if you're interested in reading more. You can also watch the hour-and-a-half panel on the C-SPAN Web site if you have RealPlayer on your computer. (Thanks to the National Debate for the link)
Comments are in purple italic font.
ALEX JONES (Moderator): Is the convention of journalism to allow a response from the opposition instead of for the journalist to say 'So-and-so said this but this is what we think and this is what we can demonstrate,' or 'This is what the facts are.' Is this kind of convention defeating the ability of people to actually understand the bottom line and understand what the facts are
No I don't think it's defeating. It is a problem for anybody who practices journalism, particularly, daily journalism. But in general journalism, this is a problem. My own view of this, and I'd be interested to know my colleagues' view is, but I'd be surprised if it varies very much. Insofar as it is possible, one of the jobs of any journalist worthy of the name is to separate brass tacks from bullshine. Uh, that's, the question having to do with the spin machines, I mean, that's our job, to separate those kinds of things out.
And what if you can't determine what's bullshine? Is it even a journalist's business to decide for viewers what is valid and invalid?
Now when you have the kind of situation that you outlined in which you say, 'He says, but he says,' I don't consider myself limited by that. If there are demonstrable facts that one counter to what one or both have said, then it is our responsibility to point those facts out. However, I don't consider it my job, some others may, it's not my job to say, 'So don't you see, uh, that Candidate Y is lying.' I don't see that as my job.
My job is to say, 'He says this, he says this. Here are the facts. Some of these facts are at variance with what Candidate Y said today, and they may be with what Candidate X said the day before yesterday.' I think this is in the mainstream tradition of journalism and has been for a long time, and continues to be.
JONES: My sense is, though, that the he-said-she-said gets there but too often the 'here's what the facts are'--
RATHER: I think that is fair criticism and I do not except myself [sic] uh, from, uh, about the level. I think it's important for viewers and listeners and readers to understand, uh, that fear has increased in every newsroom in America. Uh, for a lot of reasons, maybe one of the things you wanna talk about. But there is some fear that if you take that extra step--this is, this is not an excuse as by way of explaining what sometimes happens. There's an undertow that says, 'OK, Candidate X has said this, Y has said this. Here are the facts we need to point out. You know what, maybe today we want to point out only a few of them or not point them out at all.' Because when you do that, you gonna catch hell.
Uh, now, we get paid to catch hell. What I'm suggesting is those, and I include myself in this criticism again, who are prepared to pay the price for that have gotten fewer and those few who're willing to do it, do it less often than they once did.
So Rather won't cover negative stories about Bush critic Joseph Wilson, 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, Sandy Berger, post-war Iraq, scandals at the U.N. Because he's afraid of catching hell? From whom? How could they legitimately 'give hell' since his program has run exactly one report on all of these stories combined?
...
JENNINGS: I take exception to the idea that there's fear in the newsroom.
Lehrer says he doesn't feel effected by the higher levels of political passion that appear to be more common nowadays.
After being criticized for his "fear" comment, Rather responded to the question of if he felt effected by increased political tensions.
RATHER: I think it has had an effect. I think, on the positive side, it's made us a little, at least a little bit more cautious. Most of us subscribe to the idea, at least I do, that you trust your mother but you cut the cards.
Especially if your mother is a Republican.
This is one of the tenets of journalism. You check it out. You check, you double-check, and if possible, you triple-check, and then you check again. Your question was, has it had an effect, this polarization of the country, the hatred quotient, if you will. I think it has had at least a sumbliminal [sic] effect, more than that, that it's, 'You know what, we'd better check again,' because you can't afford to be wrong. You can't even afford--never mind you never can afford to be wrong on the facts--but you'd better have the story in good context and perspective when you're reporting on an issue that you know that this high polarization.
So that's why CBS hasn't reported the stories mentioned above? Afraid of getting it wrong? Somehow that doesn't seem likely. Accuracy concerns certainly didn't bother Rather when he earlier called the disclosure of the DOJ's investigation into Berger's alleged theft of top-secret documents a "carefully orchestrated leak" with no proof whatsoever.
Now, come back again, I think it was Peter, maybe Tom, said they would quarrel with the word fear. I won't get in an argument about it but there is a certain amount of caution in the newsroom because the politicians have gotten better at applying pressure. They've always been good at doing it. Lyndon Johnson was terrific at it, and for all I know, Woodrow Wilson was good at it. Even I was not alive during Woodrow Wilson's day.
No, they've always been good at it, but they've gotten better at it. And now, if you touch one of the most explosive issues that have led to this polarization, they have instant response teams that will be all over your telephones, all over your email, all over your mail. Mind you, this is not an indictable offense, this is America, they're entitled to do it. But part of what you have to do in a newsroom now that you didn't have to do before, you might have had to deal with a hundred telephone calls before, now, if the orchestrated campaign by either one of the parties or some politician's campaign gets on you, you may have several thousand emails and telephone calls, you, to which you have to respond.
Translation: Normal news viewers are too stupid to think that an Evening News story is unfair. The only complaints that CBS fields are from lunatics or paid political hacks. Average Americans have nothing to be upset about.
I'm suggesting this creates an undertow in which you say to yourself, 'You know what, I think we're right on this story. I think we've got it in the right context, I think we've got it in the right perspective. But we'd better take another day just to let it marionate [sic] before we come back to the story.'
Is that a carefully orchestrated undertow? Does Dan really mean to say that being accountable is like an underwater current that kills swimmers if they get caught in it?
Now that can be a positive, but it also can be a negative, because sometimes your boss or sometimes somebody on your staff could say, 'You know what, we run this story, we're asking for trouble with a capital "T." Why do it? Why not just pass on by?'
That happens. I'm sorry to report that happens. Now, you can say well that's the result of fear, it's the result of not wanting to deal with all the trouble of all those emails and telephone calls. But the pressure sometimes tells.
Examples, please?
On pressure from the corporate level:
RATHER: I cannot think of a single time when I have felt any pressure, and I mean any pressure from our corporate superstructure. And that includes the time that Larry Tisch was there. [...]
At CBS, I have not felt this one iota. Les Moonves, who runs our operation, and Sumner Redstone above him, on this issue, they have been terrific.
JENNINGS: I feel the presence of anger in the air all the time. I feel it on the street. I feel it in corporations. I feel it in newsrooms. I see it in newspapers, I hear it on the airwaves. [...]
RATHER: That's a broader picture. I thought, forgive me, I thought your frame of reference was the corporate thing.
JENNINGS: I'm not stupid enough to sit up here and say it's a Disney leadership thing.
BROKAW: The fact is, Alex, the fact is that--it will come as no secret to this room, and it certainly is no secret to us--as there was at one time in our own careers, a kind of tyranny of the left or the liberalism, if you will. During the 60s especially, especially on college campuses, in which it was very hard to hear a conservative voice or have a conservative point of view reflected on the evening news. What the conservatives in this country have learned in the last 10 years especially is that they feel they have to go to war against the networks every day, I think. It's what Rush Limbaugh does every day, it's what Brent Bozell does every day. As I say there are these organized constituencies that are out there that can be mobilized. And that's part of the political give-and-take of the time in which we live. Our job then, is to be resistant to that. As, you know, we should have been more resistant, in some ways, I suppose, to the idea that there were going to only be liberal voices on the air in the 60s; that there could have been more conservative voices, which I honestly believe.
You think back during that time, uh, there was a nascent conservative movement in the country, it wasn't very large but the only person you saw on the air was Bill Buckley or Robert Novak. That was it.
JENNINGS: That's a failure of ours, you'd agree?
BROKAW: Pardon me?
JENNINGS: That's a failure of ours, you would agree?
BROKAW: I agree. I agree with that. That's my point.
Notice only Brokaw and Jennings are talking here. Rather was conspicuously silent until...
Is Jones's friend correct to diagnose the news media as liberal? Rather quotes chapter and verse from liberal author's book against the idea.
BROKAW: He should read our email.
RATHER: Well he should also listen to Bill Kristol, whom I don't think anybody would accuse of being a liberal, says, and I quote it, quote him here. I brought this so I could quote him directly. Far be it if I miss one word. Quote William Kristol: 'I admit it, the liberal media were never that powerful and the whole thing was just an excuse for conservative failures.'
Pat Buchanan, not exactly a bomb-throwing Bolshivek. Pat Buchanan says, quote 'The truth is, I've gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive.' Another quote: 'I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage. All we could have asked. We kid about the liberal media, but every Republican on earth does that.'
ERIC ALTERMAN (from audience): Give the source for that!
RATHER: I didn't hear what you said.
ALTERMAN: Give the source!
RATHER: Uh, Pat Buchanan.
ALTERMAN: No, it's from my book What Liberal Media?
(laughter)
RATHER: Let me say in fairness--
JONES: Eric, Eric, will you be having copies outside?
RATHER: Eric, it says here that it was the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Perhaps you quoted from the Guardian.
(laughter)
...
If I may, out of fairness and accuracy, I've double-checked now on that note and in fairness to our outspoken, and understandably so, author, I want to point out that when I said that quote, 'Kristol quote came from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, that the Pat Buchanan book may very well have come from your book. And I want to make note of that for accuracy because you didn't have the chance to respond to my smart-ass remark.
JONES: Oh, he'll respond.
(Rather nods, salutes in Alterman's direction.)
The odds are about 4 billion to 1 that Dan would treat an author alleging a liberal bias in the media in the same manner. Notice also that Rather's argument is completely anecdotal and not at all statistical, something that a skeptical journalist ought not to condone. The CBS anchor is also quite naïve if he really believes that many Republicans do not question the "conservative credentials" of his two anecdotal sources, if they are even quoted in context at all.
It's also pretty clear from this exchange that Rather does not ignore his liberal critics.
Why media cover Iraq more than the economy, which more Americans are said to be interested in.
RATHER: No, I feel strongly about that. Every day, when a single American soldier is wounded, much less killed, that's news. And when several are killed in a given day, that trumps the economy. We cover the economy. Sometimes I think we overcover it. Certainly don't overcover it in terms of intelligence with the economy. The economy is a big running story. It's a big issue in the campaign. It may very well be that people vote their pocketbooks and nothing else. But with the country at war when we lost, at a time when we've lost 900 of our treasured young men and women, uh, it'll lead the CBS Evening News. It has. It does. It will, and I think it ought to as long as it goes on.
Starting a few months ago, after the success of Ted Koppel's Nightline death list, Rather began running a nightly series called "CBS Salutes Fallen Heroes." Strangely, none of the "fallen heroes" included any American who died in September 11th, or was killed abroad by terrorists. Apparently some deaths are more equal than others.
LEHRER: Same here. Amen.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Absolutely.
JONES: Tom, Peter?
BROKAW: No, I agree with that. I'm always troubled with studies that show a quantitative imbalance. [...] We don't live in a statistically certain world when we're putting the news on every night.
WOODRUFF: Iraq has been at the center of a great national debate for the last year and a half. It's entirely, it seems to me, logical that we would focus on that.
Woodruff is most on-target.
RATHER: Unless you're talking about negative coverage. There are people, because I've heard from them, and hear from them fairly consistently that say, 'Listen, you ran another picture of a casket coming back from Iraq.' And that's, in their minds, that's negative. It makes a lot of difference who is deciding what's negative and what isn't.
Notice the flip-flop from above. Earlier when the subject was news, Rather said that there were objective facts that could be determined. Now that the subject is bias in the news, Rather goes all post-modern. You can't have it both ways, Dan.
I agree it's negative. There's very little about war that isn't. But we're going to show those pictures when we can at the risk of being damned as 'Well all you do is accentuate the bad news out of Iraq.'
We do our stories about rebuilding soccer fields rebuilding schools, all of that. I think it's fair criticism to say maybe we don't do enough of that. But, in the limited time that we have, when it comes, when push comes to shove, the fact that there are people fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and-- By the way, we have tried hard, and I think Peter and everybody else here as well, that there's an effort to say 'Well, don't report the figures of people who have died in Iraq who didn't exactly die in absolute direct combat.' It's report combat fatalities. And it's all part of the campaign to make it appear that the casualties are, in fact, less than they are. And that's seen as negative.
Did Dan read our Postwar Iraq analysis? It proved definitively that CBS does focus too much on negative stories coming out of Iraq?
About pressures from viewers and the corporate hierarchy:
RATHER: I don't deny that there might be some in some places, but I don't feel that. But, you know, part of what we get paid to do is resist the pressures. That's one definition of the practice of journalism is some integrity, not to be preachy about it, is to, you know, stand up against the pressure. I think what we've collectively said it would be unwise for the viewers, readers, and listeners not to recognize that these pressures exist, they have gotten worse, uh, for one thing, some of them are better organized. They do create an undertow. Whether, as I maintain, it creates fear in the newsroom or just caution, you will decide. But we get paid to resist these pressures. But I would say as a consumer of news, one test of where you get--from where you get your news might be 'How well do I think they resist the various pressures on them to be, insofar as it's humanly possible, be honest brokers of information?'
As an unelected actor who has great influence on the public mind, Dan's cavalier attitude toward his "voters'" opinions shows quite readily. No wonder so many have been punching the button for another anchor candidate. Such a haughty mindset would doom any politician.
On why younger people seem to prefer to get news from comedians instead of news shows:
JENNINGS (paraphrase): Comedian news viewers don't tune in for the news, they tune in for their take on the news.
BROKAW(paraphrase): That some people would think they're getting the news is a tribute to how skilled the Daily Show is. 'I think it's a brilliant production of political satire.' But I'm not sure that everyone realizes that they're watching a parody of an interview instead of a real one.
WOODRUFF: My husband Al Hunt teaches a class at Penn and he asks his students where they get their news from. Most of them say the Daily Show.
RATHER: The news audience is an older audience inherently.
LEHRER: I may be naïve and overly optimistic but I think that one of the results of all this incredible burst of information sources is going to be a return to programs like the nightly news. Young people as well as older folks. Because they want somebody to sort it in an even-handed way. Because a lot of young people haven't discovered the nightly news. I think the gatekeeper idea is going to become more and more relevant than it has been. It's gone way down because of the Internet and whatever but it's going to go up because 'My God! What is all this stuff? What's all this going on?'
Lehrer's comments are intriguing and probably will come true in some form. Just as "Web portals" have become the hub of most people's Internet activity, one can easily imagine a respected news organization doing the same for information. Lehrer might consider, however, why such a news portal couldn't be online.
On leadup to war, as prompted by Democratic congresswoman:
RATHER: One of the things we could've done is asked more questions with more follow-up questions in an effort to get more direct answers. That's one of the things. And let me just speak for myself, this may be shared, but for myself. That more questions should have been asked. Look, when a president of the United States, any president, Republican or Democrat, says 'These are the facts,' there is heavy prejudice, including my own, to give him the benefit of the doubt. And for that I do not apologize. Uh, I think this is deep in, not only in our American character, in our society, there is an assumption, and up to a point a valid one, 'Look he knows things we don't know. He has access that we don't.'
However, as a professional journalist, our job, and the job of other journalists is to ask questions and keep on asking questions and continue to press on questions. One thing it sometimes makes the policy-makers, the decision-makers, go back and sort of check their hole cards. That is to say to go and say, 'Am I sure about this?'
That, I think, is the number one thing is that we did not do our job of pressing, and asking enough questions often enough, and pursuing the questions, and having enough follow-up questions. The idea that we somehow could have gone to Iraq and somehow determine whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, I consider, uh, um, I consider it with a smile. It's just not practical. But, to keep pressing about where did this information come from, how good is the information, are you sure of the information--those kinds of questions. When I referred to fear before, um, that's one of the specific things I had in mind. I think there is a reluctance--about this I could be wrong, I'm wrong about a lot of things--I think there is more reluctance now then there was 25, 30 years ago to stand up, look 'em in the eye and ask the hard question. I think there is an undertow not to do that. Particularly to not to follow up on it.
Rather is echoing the words of his fellow liberal who also denies being a Democrat, Michael Moore, who last month said basically the same thing: "I consider the CBS Evening News propaganda. Why don't we talk about the news on this and the other networks that didn’t do the job they should have done at the beginning of this war, demanded the evidence, asked the hard questions. We may not have even gone into this war, had these networks done their job."
No one should be surprised at this. Quoting chapter and verse from a shoddy book written by a left-wing media critic isn't that far removed echoing the sentiments of Michael Moore.
Rather is such a load.
Screen grab from the video.
Two liars vouching for each other.
As I understand it, 3 hours of test patterns get better ratings than Dan Rather.
Rather biased, don't you think?
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