Dan Rather's Day of Reckoning: It didn't start with Rathergate. (Highly recommended!)

The Weekly Standard ^ | October 4, 2004 | John Podhoretz

[quidnunc]

-snip-

CBS News airs a report about a Vietnam-era controversy. Almost immediately the report comes under harsh attack, its credibility and essential honesty challenged. There's a huge uproar, complete with calls for a congressional investigation. CBS is compelled to acknowledge certain errors in its handling of the story, though senior officials say pointedly that no one has challenged its basic thrust.

Does this sound familiar? It is, but this is not just a quick-and-dirty recap of the current mess at CBS. For the few CBS News staffers who have been at the network for more than 30 years, the events of the past few weeks must make them feel they're trapped inside Nietzsche's "eternal return." This is the third occasion over the past 32 years in which CBS News has been caught behaving unethically and irresponsibly in the reporting and editing of a hot-button issue involving the United States, the Vietnam war, and the behavior and conduct of senior officials in Washington.

One of those CBS employees with a long memory is Dan Rather, who has been with the network's news division for 42 years. If you want to understand why Rather is being so recalcitrant and finding it so difficult to make a full acknowledgment of his role in perpetrating a colossal journalistic and political fraud — and why he was so adamantly opposed to an internal investigation of his now-infamous story about George W. Bush's National Guard service — you need to understand that Rather saw his network weather two previous and surprisingly similar tempests.

-snip-

[Nita Nupress]

Excellent article. Thanks.

[Jaysun]

That's a fairly long article, but well worth it. He identifies the beginning and the end of the liberal propaganda machine.

[RKV]

This is a must read.

[CaliGirlGodHelpMe]

HAHAHAHA! Great cartoon, I hadn't seen that one.

[litany_of_lies]

Somewhere in heaven, my father is smiling. Until he died 5 years ago, he said exactly what Podhoretz said in this article.

Vindication is sweet, Dad. These two paragraphs were written for you and millions of other who knew the truth:

That's why, even though the precipitating event was a genuine outrage--CBS News's breathless use of forged documents accusing George W. Bush of disobeying a direct order from his National Guard superior in an all-too-obvious effort to sway the opinions of voters only 48 days before the 2004 election--the outrage has been accompanied by a spirit of giddiness and exhilaration almost from the moment the onslaught began.

This is a moment that's been a very long time coming. For four decades now, conservatives have been convinced, with supreme justification, that the institutional, ideological, and cultural biases of the mainstream media represented a danger to the causes in which they believe and the ideas they hold dear. What has happened over the past weeks isn't the beginning of a transformation. It's the culmination of a 40-year-long indictment that has, at long last, led to a slam-dunk conviction.

For 40 years (I'd say 60), CBS has thought itself untouchable. They're not untouchable any more, which is nice, but they also need to be held accountable, not just for RatherGate, but for decades of unconscionable manipulation of the news.

[jocon307]

"This is John Podhoretz' finest essay..."

Without a doubt. My thoughts exactly, as I came here to post it and found it on the search.

Quid, you always post the good stuff!

[alrea]

an all-too-obvious effort to sway the opinions of voters only 48 days before the 2004 election--the outrage has been accompanied by a spirit of giddiness and exhilaration almost from the moment the onslaught began

giddiness and exhilaration at being able to make up events to suit their mission of taking property that doesn't belong to them

[cousair]

Podhoretz is always good the this is one of his best. I watched a movie, "Shattered Glass" on Direct TV the other night. It was about New Republic, and what happened there sometime in the late '90's It is the CBS story all over the place and what happened when obvious stories printed for truth, were totally false. The main guy was a new reporter, not one like Rather and how his stories, brillently written, and not factual, finally took them all out. Excellent in this time of lies and cheating.

[COUNTrecount]

Fabulous article.

[Richard Kimball]

Your post is absolutely correct. There have been several disconnects from reality in the reporting of this story. The first, and I think deliberate, incorrect information, is the assumption that Rather was duped. Rather has never been a reporter. He is a political idealogue and a propagandist. He also epitomizes the Godless mind, which does not believe in the concept of truth. His interview, where he stated that Bill Clinton could lie about many things and still be an honest man illustrates this. In the Bush story, he didn't care whether the story was true or not. He didn't care if the documents were forged. He didn't care if Ben Barnes was making up his story, and that Barnes directly contradicted his own earlier statements. He didn't care if Bill Burkett was mentally unbalanced. The only question he had was, "can we get away with it?"

The second point is exactly what you said. People keep talking about Rather getting in trouble with the brass at CBS News. Rather IS CBS News. He had enough power to block Cronkite from doing any on air work after he stepped down from the anchor desk.

I also think Rather has gone senile. For several years now, he's looked about as balanced as Jerry Lewis in the last two hours of the MD marathon. Rather is the same dishonest propagandist he's been for his entire career, but he's lost a step and can't make up stories as well as he used to. Also, of course, the leftists in the old media don't control the agenda anymore. Ten years ago, he would have gotten away with these crappy forgeries, just like Bill Clinton was able to mush the Flowers affair and his summer in the Soviet Union when he was supposedly at Oxford. It ain't happening anymore.

[meema]

This is one of the best {and historical} articles on this subject I have ever read!
Everyone, please don't miss it!
I read it yesterday at NRO, and happy to see it posted on at least 2 of my favorite sites. {Sorry, I have never taken the time to learn how to post articles...my shame}.

[cyncooper]

THE AGNEW SPEECH gave profound voice to the growing sense among non-liberals in the United States that their concerns, their interests, and their views were either not reflected or were under direct attack by the media. The ways in which the media misreported and misrepresented news events and political shifts became a subject of consuming interest in neoconservative and conservative intellectual and journalistic precincts, from Commentary and the pre-Clinton American Spectator to National Review and Human Events.

Indeed. Watching "news" organizations craft lies and boldly present them as "facts" is endlessly fascinating, appalling, breathtaking, infuriating and frustrating.

Thank God for the internet and talk radio. The voices that despise Fox (for pete's sake!) and talk radio despise debate, differing opinions, and in the end, they despise truth.

[cyncooper]

This is some stunning article giving historical perspective.

I'm bookmarking it.

Wow is right.

[cyncooper]

Dan Rather's eternal return ends here with the collapse of his reputation and the collapse of the 20th-century American news industry in which he was one of the last grand potentates. And it is a bleak end, unless he can console himself with the thought that he didn't fail to live up to the standards of his predecessors. He followed perfectly in their footsteps.

Highlighting from the article.

[cyncooper]

Stunning

[cyncooper]

The first, and I think deliberate, incorrect information, is the assumption that Rather was duped.

Exactly.

[Mo1]

Stunning

That it is .. as I was mentioning to nopardons, I knew of their bias .. I just didn't know how bad it was .. and I have a feeling it is still a lot worse

The reason why they elite media is so freaked out about about sites like FR is because those who have known for years are educating those like myself who were too young back then to know what really happen

[Magnolia]

MUST read BUMP...

[MamaLucci]

ROFL!!

[Eva]

I think that before the conservatives get too excited over the debacle at CBS, they better consider the ramifications of the end product of this investigation. A possible return to the Fairness in Media Doctrine, which the left is trying to use to limit Scaife, Rush and other conservative media personalities.