Posted on 01/14/2005 10:10:31 AM PST by JohnHuang2
CBS News anchor Dan Rather continues to stand by the content of the documents used in a now-discredited "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment on President Bush's National Guard service, a panel investigating the botched story revealed this week."Rather informed the panel that he still believes the content of the documents is true because 'the facts are right on the money,' and that no one had provided persuasive evidence that the documents were not authentic," the panel's 224-page report said. Continues...
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Rather Saves Job; fall gals take rap
So, after killing half the trees in the Pacific Northwest forest to produce their report, probers into RatherGate report that the closer they looked at the documents, the harder it became to dismiss the possibility they were bogus. On a roll, they were also shocked to discover there's bad journalism at CBS (also known as the Dinosaur Channel). After three months hot on the trail of a story that took a few guys in pajamas 3 whole minutes to crack, the sleuthhounds probing Memogate noted that they "were not prepared to brand the Killian documents as an outright forgery," so staffers who aired the Killian documents should be fired. Especially if the staffers are chicks. Capping CBS's finest hour, fired were producer Mary Mapes, who tied Dan Rather to a chair and forced him to air the "60 Minutes" segment at gun-point; senior vice president Betsy West; top deputy Mary Murphy and her boss, Josh Howard. To avoid capture, Rather fled the country, hid somewhere in Sri Lanka for weeks, bravely emerging after learning his underlings took the fall. (According to the report, Rather had no knowledge of wrongdoing -- he was only running the place. The report was titled, CYA.)
Mapes stunned Washington by issuing a statement that she was "terribly disappointed." You get the feeling she wasn't thrilled. Bush knew she'd be fired and did nothing to stop it.
The controversy was sparked after CBS, on the heels of the Republican convention, aired a Fake-But-Accurate piece based on an Unimpeachable Source who lied to CBS which says it was duped by a screwball who claimed to know the answer to the eminently relevant question that ordinary people in Kansas had been losing sleep over: Did Bush skip a flight physical 35 years ago? The Unimpeachable Source is Bill Burkett, who says Bush, when governor, had shipped him to Panama where Bush had secretly produced a wicked virus which wickedly found him and infected him, so obviously this nut had no ax to grind. (He later said he made the whole thing up.) After a media interview last summer, Burkett "suffered a violent seizure and collapsed in his chair" -- like John Kerry did on election night. Richard Thornburgh, one of the probers, told ABC News that Rather "mischaracterized the source, referred to him as 'unimpeachable,' when it's well-known in the background of this particular source was a lot of bias and a lot of reason to pause." This would qualify Burkett as anchor for CBS News.
Approximately sixty seconds after the "60 Minutes" story aired, questions were raised about the memos, with bloggers patiently explaining to Dan Rather that Killian's Microsoft Word Documents were inconsistent with typewriters built during the Ottoman empire. According to the report, Rather says he still believes the story is true and that he would not go ahead with the story knowing what he knows today. "If those memos are fake, I'd like to break that story," says Rather. (Despite tips from 4 million document experts that the memos are fake, Rather is holding the story till it's ready.)
The report also notes that, except for CBS airing stories all year about Bush the Liar, the Fratboy, the Stupid, Lazy, Election-Stealing Mastermind Moron, there's no evidence of anti-Bush bias at CBS. (Bush -- felon, traitor, warmonger . . . but, hey, nothing Personal!) The election-year timing and content of the Bush Guard story was just a coincidence. Mapes put Burkett in contact with Kerry campaign spokes-hack Joe Lockhart -- another coincidence. For weeks, CBS didn't tell viewers -- all 20 of them -- that the documents were faxed by some freakshow in Abilene, and that was a coincidence too. CBS uses a sleazebag with a background of hating Bush as its main source, so probers conclude from this that there was no political bias. (CBS motto: We're not biased -- just incompetent.)
In e-mails to Josh Howard, Mapes writes that "there is some interesting Bush stuff shaking out there right now . . . lots of goodies . . . there is a strong feeling that this time, there is blood in the water" -- more evidence of how wonderfully impartial CBS reporters can be.
The "60 Minutes" segment marked the third time Rather and Mapes had tried to nail Bush on whether he skipped that flight physical. The second time was in '99 when he ran for president as Texas governor. I think the first time was when he ran for student president in High School.
Rather said mistakes were made because he was too pooped after covering the GOP convention and coming up with the scoop of the Century -- a hurricane in Florida. He was too tired to check. (Even covering the GOP convention was exhausting for Rather. He just didn't know who the nominee would be.) Twelve days into Memogate and under fire, Rather insisted the documents were authentic -- still too tired to check. Anyway, the incident was just a third-rate forgery. The L.A. Times quotes one CBS veteran as saying that "Rather's hectic schedule meant that 'he was not as involved as he should have been.'" The workaholic was too busy not doing his job. The CBS veteran, Linda Mason, was appointed Monday to the new position of vice president for "Standards and Practices." If you're a reporter, one standard might be that if someone's story smells like Michael Moore's knickers and that someone foams at the mouth when you whisper 'George Bush' -- those could be two early clues the witness isn't completely reliable. (Now, how did I know that?) But I guess airing a bogus story wasn't Rather's real mistake. He could've labeled it a Documentary and won the People's Choice Award.
The report said that CBS, in airing the segment, relied on shady sources, did sloppy work, rushed to air without vetting, failed to get their facts straight, failed to check sources, failed to follow basic journalistic principles. In other words, just another day at CBS News. The report blames competitive pressures for the rush to air and "myopic zeal". (They feared being scooped by "Weekly World News"!)
To show they take these charges seriously and to repair the damage caused by Dan Rather's work at "60 Minutes", network honchos are punishing him with retirement from the 'Evening News', where he played an Idiot Newsreader, and hiring him full-time for "60 Minutes", where he'll play an Idiot Newsreader. (Al-Jazeera turned him down.)
So, after three months of investigating RatherGate, the panel still can't tell if there's bias at CBS and still can't tell if the documents are fakes and still can't say who fabricated the documents but tells the big bosses to fire the secretaries but keep the guy who's the poster boy for Memogate because he didn't know what was going on all around him because he was too tired to do his job.
In other words, like my headline says: Rather Saves Job; fall gals take the rap
Anyway, that's...
My Two Cents...
"JohnHuang2"
Re; Rather's faith in his memos: verily, he is of little faith, for faith used to move mountains, and now his is barely powerful enough to create bogus memos...
Rather can do nothing other than what he is doing on adivice of his attorney. Otherwise he is admitting to felonious lawlessness and opening himself and CBS and Robin up to civil actions for various torts. So his ethics remain vacuuous. He is trying to save his own skin and that of his daughter.
LOL. You just have to laugh, otherwise you'd want to beat your head against the wall trying to fathom how absolutely ridiculous this statement is and how someone could say it.
5.56mm
Thanks for the ping. How many of us didn't see this coming? Let's have a show of hand(no plural). These media elites are untouchable. They let their underlings take the fall and continue on with their propaganda, maybe in a different role but still determined to brainwash.
I don't get it, but didn't Rather say he was retiring in March?
I couldn't have said it better!
He is 'the face'. That is all.
Dan who? Sorry the name just doesn't ring a bell.
Thanks, JH2. Here's an editorial by Pat Buchanan on the subject.
Jim
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Human Events Online
The National Conservative Weekly
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/
The Criminal Conspiracy to Sink Bush
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted Jan 14, 2005
At CBS, they still don't get it.
The same holds true for the investigators of Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" report, which charged that George W. Bush, while in the Texas Air National Guard, used political pull to escape punishment for his insolent insubordination to a superior officer.
For this story, at root, is about far more than just the blunders, deceptions, and stonewalling of Rather, Mary Mapes, and CBS.
The real story is who was behind this criminal conspiracy to bring down a president of the United States, using fake and forged U.S. government documents, which is a felony. And who knew of the plot?
In this conspiracy, CBS and Rather were complicit. They fenced the counterfeit documents -- innocently, they say. Yet, their behavior is more like that of guilty accomplices than beguiled victims.
The unanswered questions are these: Who created the fake documents? Was it Bill Burkett alone? Who placed Col. Killian's signature onto the counterfeits? How many people knew this hit on President Bush was going down? Did the DNC or Kerry campaign know, in advance, CBS was going to dump on Bush?
Why haven't CBS or ex-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh called in the U.S. attorney's office and turned over all evidence they have of this felony, designed to assassinate the character of the president and timed to effect his defeat in the election of 2004?
By now, everyone involved in this criminal conspiracy, actively or innocently, should have been taken before a federal grand jury.
There are other unexplained matters.
Where is the outrage of Rather, whose reputation has been ruined and career destroyed by the criminals who cooked up the fakes? Last September, Rather said that if the memos turned out to be fake, he would love to break that story. Why hasn't he? Why hasn't CBS turned the dogs loose on those who did this to it?
The second failure of the investigation is in how it dealt with the motivation of Mapes and Rather in rushing to air their "scoop," and in their fanatic defense of the story when it was apparent to almost everyone they had been had.
Asked if there was any truth to the notion he may have been politically biased, Rather stonewalled: "Absolutely unequivocally untrue!" Mapes, the producer, known to be a hard-core liberal, also denied any political bias. Well, as the Duke of Wellington said, "If you believe that, madam, you will believe anything."
What other than a vendetta explains a five-year obsession by both Rather and Mapes with a story, the only result of which could be to injure President Bush? What else explains the Alamo defense of the Killian memos, when all America knew they were bogus? What else explains Rather's insistence to this day the documents may be valid? What else explains CBS' refusal to hand over the Bush-haters who did this? What else explains why Rather would denounce those who questioned the memos as political "partisans," while laughably describing as an "unimpeachable" source the certifiable Bush-hating eccentric who gave CBS the memos?
"Myopic zeal" explains it, says the Thornburgh report. But what was behind this myopic zeal? Was it a noble desire to bring the truth to the people on a vital issue, or blind ambition to bring down a Republican president and make Rather, Mapes and CBS the Woodward, Bernstein and Washington Post of 2004?
Even with the Killian memos excluded, the Rather-Mapes piece had all the fairness of an attack ad by Moveon.org.
Finally, what motive, other than an animus against Bush, explains why, to this day, CBS -- which must now know it was used as the patsy in a criminal conspiracy to destroy the president -- has not issued an apology to George W. Bush along these lines:
"We now believe the Killian memos, which were behind our story that President Bush was an insubordinate officer, are fakes. As we have no other hard evidence that George W. Bush either was insubordinate or used political pull to avoid being punished for insubordination, we retract the charge, we retract the story, we apologize to our viewers, and, especially, we apologize to President Bush."
But because Rather simply cannot concede what is true, that he abhors the Right and cannot abide Bush, CBS has had to invoke the Ted Baxter Defense on his behalf: Poor Dan stumbled because he was exhausted by his labors at the GOP convention and covering a hurricane.
The first step in the cure of alcoholism is a frank admission you are an alcoholic. The first antidote to preventing a bias from getting you into the kind of trouble CBS and Rather are in is to recognize such a bias exists.
CBS and Rather, however, remain in denial, and they will continue to step into it, again and again, until they look hard into a mirror.
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Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of The Death of the West, The Great Betrayal, and A Republic, Not an Empire.
Copyright © 2005 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
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http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=6302
Rather survives, and those immediately above him and below him get the axe.
That shows who really has power at CBS News.
I don't know if its "power" or just the difficulty of quickly replacing CBS's main face to the world. In many ways, Rather stands for the CBS News brand. Of course, if Moonves had any sense, he'd fire the lot of them and announce that he's starting over from scratch. He could hardly do worse in the ratings than they now are, so he might as well take a hint from Fox.
Good one!
You nailed it.
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