Posted on 01/11/2005 11:12:53 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Keep Rather forever!
By Joseph Farah
I know many of you are thinking today that CBS really blew it by keeping Dan Rather on while firing four of his subordinates for his major broadcasting error in the last election cycle.
It was old Dan who read the news that day, accusing the president of chicanery to avoid fulfilling his National Guard duty. It was old Dan who presided over this story in every way as managing editor of CBS News. It was old Dan who assured us those bogus documents were real.
But he stays and four sacrificial lambs get the ax.
Is this justice? Is this right? Of course not. But it's a good thing. Let me explain.
We need to keep old Dan Rather at CBS for as long as possible.
We need him there to remind us of what the Old Media are all about.
We need him there like a museum exhibit on those days when we forget just how bad things can get in the old, corporate, establishment press. We need him there for the same reason we need the old T-Rex at the Museum of Natural History.
This is character you just don't run into every day any more. He's a throwback to an earlier time – pre-reformation journalism.
I really don't care about CBS News. It's an irrelevancy to me. It's an irrelevancy to all informed people.
Let Dan Rather and CBS be remembered for what they did in 2004.
It's not that it was the first abuse of his profession. Hardly.
In 1988, in the midst of another presidential campaign in which another George Bush was running for president against another Massachusetts politician, Dan Rather made up another story – about Vietnam War atrocities allegedly committed routinely by American troops.
What do these two Rather scandals have in common?
They begin to show a pattern of deceit by Rather. They begin to suggest motivations beyond aggressive reporting. They begin to hint that Rather, like his favored 2004 presidential candidate, John F. Kerry, may be obsessed by the Vietnam War, the historical issue chosen by the Democratic candidate as the cornerstone of the campaign last year.
Why would Rather try to re-fight the Vietnam War in 1988? Was he setting the stage for an eventual run for the presidency by Sen. John Kerry, who could never consider such a campaign as long as his own ridiculous, unsubstantiated, reckless charges against U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were redeemed? Was he thinking that far ahead? Or was he doing what came naturally to him – being the partisan shill for his friends in the Democratic Party?
Rather himself insists he is non-partisan. But the facts betray this contention.
When challenged about this partisanship, Rather said it's not true. And he offered as proof his opposition to President Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War.
Again, what does that suggest? A near obsession with the Vietnam War – perhaps the defining issue in Dan Rather's ideology, his worldview.
And there we were in 2004 – fighting Vietnam all over again.
As for Rather's non-partisanship, all you really have to know is that in 2001 he used his celebrity as a newsman to help raise money for the Democratic Party of Texas.
He broke a cardinal sin of journalistic ethics when he spoke to the fund-raiser. When he was busted, he apologized and characterized the decision as a grave error in judgment.
I'm sorry. I've been in the news business for 30 years. Ethical journalists don't just make "mistakes" like that. I've been invited to speak to many political fund-raisers. I've never been tempted to accept. It's a no-no. It's unthinkable. Dan Rather probably gets dozens of speaking requests a month. He doesn't just go out and do them without thinking. He wanted to do that fund-raiser for the Democratic Party of Texas. He wanted to do it badly.
Believe me, he even contemplated the risks of doing it. He knew it could end his career if he did it. And he did it anyway. What does that tell you?
He is and always was a frustrated political activist, not a newsman. He's got an ideological and partisan agenda behind what he does. He was willing to put at risk a $7 million a year job and his reputation, such as it is, to score a few cheap political points.
Now nobody believes Dan Rather. Nobody believes CBS News. That's great because there is no reason to believe them. They have squandered any credibility they had.
Thank you, Dan Rather, for accomplishing what so many of your critics could never do nearly as well as you.
Please remain at CBS forever – like the living museum relic you are.
Farah has an uncanny way of putting things into perspective. CBS viewership can't sink any lower than it is now and ole Blather is still peddling his BS.
Mr Insignificant.
ah!!! why can't there be such articles in germany?
Bingo.
and he's been Mr. Insignificant for decades.
In days of old, before the remote control, I actually had to get up, cross the room to change the channel. The Evening News broadcast always meant switching the channel from cBS.
Poor ol' me, I've led such a sheltered life. I was never instructed by Dan, Walter or Edward.
"Captain Dan, the news man." Brit Hume, sometime last year.
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