Posted on 09/22/2004 6:53:40 PM PDT by wagglebee
The jig is up. The game is over. CBS tried to energize the country into voting against President Bush by highlighting forged documents it said would prove Bush's failure to serve honorably in the Texas Air National Guard. The smoking gun went up in smoke. Once caught, CBS and Dan Rather could have responded with a simple apology. Instead, they went ballistic -- and now must pay the price for their defiance.
For more than a week, Dan Rather responded like a cornered politician, blaming a vast right-wing conspiracy of "partisan political activists" for unfairly trying to change the subject from Bush's alleged misdeeds to CBS's increasingly obvious misdeeds.
In an interview with USA Today, Rather became seriously overwrought, charging that his "partisan" critics want him ... dead? What? Look at Rather's glimpse inside the conservative mind, as he sees it and decrees it: "Because he won't report it our way, we're going to hang something bad around his neck and choke him with it, check him out of existence if we can , if not, make him feel great pain."
Rather's journalistic defenses weren't any more effective than his political attacks. First, CBS cited handwriting expert Marcel Matley and Gen. Bobby Hodges to vouch for its documents. But soon, Gen. Hodges had something else to say on the matter: CBS never showed him the documents, and when he finally did see them, he said they were forgeries. Matley also contradicted CBS, maintaining he could not authenticate the documents, because they're copies. The widow and son of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the supposed author of the phony memos, also denounced the documents as fake. The supposed superior pressing on Killian as described in the memos had retired 18 months earlier.
Innumerable news outlets easily found the inconsistencies and untruths within days -- even hours -- yet CBS, which claims it spent five years on the story, found ... nothing wrong?
The real turning point of the Rathergate scandal came when ABC interviewed two document authenticators hired by CBS who said they warned CBS just days before the offending segment aired that they found "red flags" in the documents. The "honest mistake" defense was dead. CBS was now outed as complicit in this very ugly plot.
None of these developments were allowed inside Dan Rather's hermetically sealed news bubble in his on-air defenses on Sept. 10 and Sept. 14. The ultimate insult to the viewing public came on the next edition of "60 Minutes," a week after CBS aired the original fraud. The only guest was Marian Carr Knox, a secretary and typist for Lt. Col. Killian. The new CBS line, manufactured after the network flew Mrs. Knox to New York for a sitdown with Rather: Here's a single guest on camera who says our procured documents are phony, but she says the substance of them are true. And since that's all that counts, we continue to stand by our story.
What a complete dodge. A fake is a fake. Journalism schools don't teach that it's OK to fake a document to smoke out a larger "truth." (Would CBS endorse police departments planting evidence on criminal suspects who they believe are guilty for the larger "truth"?)
They may still pretend to dismiss conservative critics, but CBS and others will probably pay the most attention to the bottom line, and that broadcast news ratings meltdown continues. In 2001, the American Journalism Review reported the "CBS Evening News" lost half its viewership from 1981 to 2001. Last week, the show averaged 6.7 million viewers, which still looks powerful next to everyday cable news ratings, but hardly represents the old hegemony of the Big Three over the political process.
When I titled my book "Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media," I had no idea Dan Rather and CBS would provide such a blatant show-and-tell to prove my point. In its early days, the Big Three ruled the roost, and critics were treated like gnats -- a small annoyance, easily ignored.
After decades of liberal media arrogance and abuse, a conservative media counterculture has arisen in cable news, talk radio and the Internet. The conservative counterculture buzzes daily about the misinformation the liberal media tries to feed the people. Media accountability to their audience is now coming directly from the audience. Democracy has arrived at the CBS door. No wonder Dan Rather came unglued.
I'm glad to hear that! When I was listening to the radio this morning, CBS news was still calling them unverified and it made my blood boil.
IMHO, he's one of the heroic figures in the media war. His efforts have been tireless and impressive.
I'm screaming inside from that one. That's a bulls-eye with very little effort.
A private dispatch would be disappointing.
Now, a Brodie off a big Black Rock in Manhattan...
"Scoop" Rather would be first at the scene.
If I were running CBS, Heyward, Rather, and Mapes would all be gone, and I wouldn't necessarily stop there. You have to figure that Heyward is Rather's boss, and he just stood by and watched Dan try to defraud the American people.
Rather is our very own Baghdad Bob. Perhaps even a little funnier since unlike old Bob he is a true believer.
Exactly...this ain't going away........never!
"Yep, they are all saying Dopey Dan was Duped."
It must be an unwritten rule of the lodge that we never admit one of our number is a member of the criminal element.
I just looked at your collection....SWL=screaming with laughter!!!
I absolutely love it more than anything in the world and everytime Howard Wolfson, Al Hunt or Terry McAuliffe talk about the "bigger question of substance the documents contain", we, at our house, ring a bell, scream & shout while jumping up & down.
"I did not have sex with those documents."
"All your document belong to us."
It will never be this good again. I couldn't.
Thanks.
I've got a lot of new pieces in the works, but I've been so preoccupied with these recent events I've been spending all my time on FR instead.
Keep checking though, I should have some good new ones up soon. New bumpersticker designs too...
He LIED!!!
At the very least he lied about the document coming from an "unimpeachable source"
> charging that his "partisan" critics
> want him ... dead? What?
Off the air would be fine. Really, a thoroughly discredited liar, guilty of attempting to foist his lies on the public to manipulate an election: never should work again in a journalistic capacity.
Agreed. I love the fact that Rather can't come to grips with the fact that the "new media" is exposing him and helping to bring about his demise.
marker
I saw that interview. Kalb is such a horse's patoot.
"Consider an appropriate penalty....it ain't getting canned."
How about impaling on a stake?
"Off the air would be fine."
Actually, I would love to see that traitorous swine convicted of treason and hanged by the neck until he was dead, dead, dead.
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