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Not Biased? Dan Rather, In His Own Words
NewsMax ^

Posted on 03/09/2005 4:53:16 PM PST by Happy2BMe

Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Thursday, March 10, 2005 America's media elite is awash in a flood of tears over Dan Rather's departure tonight as anchor of the CBS Evening News, which they would like to convince the nation is a tragedy of Homeric proportions.

For Red State America, however, it's a night to rejoice – one of the nation's most demonstrably biased broadcast journalists has lost his bully pulpit and will no longer be able to peddle his far-left agenda to his millions of nightly viewers. They agree with Walter Cronkite, who now says that Rather should have stepped down years ago.

U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney a Republican from Florida says he will host a fund-raising event in Washington, D.C., called "C'est La Vie, Comrade Rather," during which attendees will be able to watch Rather's final newscast at 6:30 p.m.

"Response has been overwhelming," said Feeney. "A lot of us conservatives believe that we'll be celebrating the end of the liberal lock on the airwaves."

According to his fellow liberal journalists, Rather is a great reporter, but as Mike Walker showed in his new book "Rather Dumb" his journalism has been at best sloppy, and the real the reporting was actually done by a large staff of producers and his off-the-air reportorial staff. For the most part, Rather merely fronted the results of other people's work.

Noting Rather's statement to ABC, aired this morning, that, "I made a mistake. I didn't dig hard enough, long enough, didn't ask enough of the right questions I want to get onto the next thing, flat out, " New York's Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin wrote that Rather's bravado was "more fitting for a fading actor addicted to applause. He's a performer, a stunt man, a celebrity who makes $7 million a year for role playing."

And play he did, although to a dwindling audience that's now the smallest of the three major news networks.

Out on a Sour Note; One of Many

Unable to defend Rather's use of forged documents in an attempt to smear President Bush, Rather's supporters claim that his career cannot be judged by one episode of blatant political bias.

In response to this canard, the Media Research Council (MRC) says that "last September's politically motivated fraud wasn't a departure for Rather; it was just an extreme example of the obnoxious bias that's tarnished his whole career."

In a March 3, 2005 statement MRC's Brent Bozell laid it on the line:

"Dan Rather spent his career at CBS spinning the news to further a partisan political agenda. He fawned over Hillary Clinton (‘political lightning'), praised the impeached Bill Clinton (an ‘honest man'), attempted to ambush the first President George Bush over Iran-contra (‘you've made us hypocrites in the face of the world'), and demonized the Gingrich Revolution (as an attempt to ‘demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor').

"Dan Rather's legacy will be defined by his fall from grace during last year's presidential campaign . . . He leaves behind a news organization that is a mere shadow of its former self."

On their website, MRC lists pages of examples of Rather's undisguised leftist bias including one incident in 1987, when on the June 17 CBS Evening News Rather kowtowed to his cadre of liberal friends who could never find anything evil about the evil empire when he said "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy."

Not long after, the Soviet empire came crashing down when the Russian people belied Rather's proclamation by opting for democracy. Over the years, Rather has sought to brainwash the shrinking pool of Americans who still watched his show into believing that conservatives are hateful, far-right radicals, while the Clintons were wonderful, for example.

Notes MRC, which has kept a sharp eye and ear open for Rather's frequent excursions into liberal propaganda disguised as reporting:



TOPICS: Front Page News
KEYWORDS: danrather; danratherday; mainstreammedia; msm; ratherbiased; rathergate
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Courage, Dan.
1 posted on 03/09/2005 4:53:20 PM PST by Happy2BMe
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To: MeekOneGOP; PhilDragoo; devolve; potlatch; Boazo; Grampa Dave; Smartass; JohnHuang2; ...
Did you cry when Dan signed off tonight? - ping

(I still would have liked to have seen Saddam jail Dan during their interview in Baghdad as a hostage - probably wishes now he had.)

2 posted on 03/09/2005 4:55:27 PM PST by Happy2BMe (Government is not the solution to our problem, government *IS* the problem.)
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To: Happy2BMe

Rather, out


3 posted on 03/09/2005 4:55:30 PM PST by D Edmund Joaquin (Mayor of Jesusland)
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To: Happy2BMe

Dan,

Here's your hat. What's your hurry?


4 posted on 03/09/2005 4:56:22 PM PST by Plymouth Sentinel
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To: Happy2BMe

AND, HERE'S TO YOU PRESIDENT DICK NIXON!!!!!

SEMPER FIDELIS

DICK G


5 posted on 03/09/2005 5:01:24 PM PST by gunnyg
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To: Happy2BMe

His broadcast starts in half an hour. I'm eating cake. :-)


6 posted on 03/09/2005 5:06:05 PM PST by Soul Seeker
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To: Soul Seeker

icecream. And watching another channel. ANY other channel.


7 posted on 03/09/2005 5:17:05 PM PST by SusaninOhio
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To: Happy2BMe

Damn I missed it. Was organizing my sock drawer.


8 posted on 03/09/2005 5:17:24 PM PST by ProudVet77 (It's boogitty boogitty boogitty time!)
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To: Happy2BMe

I'll bet former Senator Jesse Helms is feeling so good tonight that it will add YEARS to his life! (Helms, as many may recall, began a drive to buy CBS back in the 80's, and apparently he really p*ssed off Rather-Biased Dan to the point that Danny-boy offered his resignation, CBS probably wishes they had taken him up on it now.

Adios Dan Blather, Here's to Third Place LUUUUUUZERS like you!


9 posted on 03/09/2005 5:18:48 PM PST by Mad Mammoth
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To: Happy2BMe
(I still would have liked to have seen Saddam jail Dan during their
interview in Baghdad as a hostage - probably wishes now he had.)

They's good buddies!


10 posted on 03/09/2005 5:21:10 PM PST by MeekOneGOP (There is only one GOOD 'RAT: one that has been voted OUT of POWER !! Straight ticket GOP!)
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To: Happy2BMe

No bias on Dan's part. Move on.


11 posted on 03/09/2005 5:24:31 PM PST by conshack
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To: Happy2BMe; Howlin; Liz; ALOHA RONNIE; RonDog; Mudboy Slim; MurryMom
Courage, Dan.


12 posted on 03/09/2005 5:37:03 PM PST by Libloather (The left is dead! Long live their impeached *King and *Queen!)
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To: Mad Mammoth
Helms, as many may recall, began a drive to buy CBS back in the 80's,

They honest to God, should write a book about that alone.

Among the people involved, were Helms, Ted Turner, and Rupert Murdoch (The latter 2 have threatened each other numerious times and have hatred that crossed politics).

There was also a whole host of other folks, I really wonder how that would have changed media and entertainment history.

13 posted on 03/09/2005 5:37:04 PM PST by Sonny M ("oderint dum metuant")
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To: Libloather

This is really sad in a way; it's just his film clips and him; evidently nobody at CBS would go on air with him.


14 posted on 03/09/2005 5:42:57 PM PST by Howlin (Free the Eason Jordan Tape!!!)
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To: Mad Mammoth

Now come come...Dan Rather maybe a liberal guy...but he's a likeable guy personally....


15 posted on 03/09/2005 5:53:09 PM PST by NATIVEDAUGHTER
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To: Happy2BMe

Dan Rather has body odor.


16 posted on 03/09/2005 5:54:23 PM PST by YourAdHere (My Brady Bunch book is now available!)
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To: Howlin
This is really sad in a way...

I have nothing against Rather Dan. He's just a left winger caught up in the Hollywood aspect of being on TV - telling everyone else something he knows and they don't - yet. Algore's invention ended that for good...

17 posted on 03/09/2005 5:57:12 PM PST by Libloather (The left is dead! Long live their impeached *King and *Queen!)
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To: ProudVet77

I missed it too. I was scrubbing grout.


18 posted on 03/09/2005 6:07:33 PM PST by Skylos
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bump


19 posted on 03/09/2005 6:27:49 PM PST by flashbunny (Every thought that enters my head requires its own vanity thread.)
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To: Skylos

LOL...you wimps who had to "clean the sock drawer".

I wasn't home from work in time to see the Rather final 'cast live...but I taped it...and watched every delicious nanosecond of him doing his final (and still lame) defense of his "quest for truth". I was disapponted he didn't cry.

He actually evoked the tragedy of 9/11 as an excuse to say (one more time!!!) "Courage."

The ULTIMATE was that after his signoff...swelling music...credits...standard out...

They came BACK to an overhead shot of the studio with a big crowd of people (allegedly the staff of cBS evening news), applauding and fawning over him.

My first thought was "they must have offered to pay the clerical staff overtime to get that many to stick around for this crowd shot". Oh, maybe it's wives, husbands and roomates...who knows. Show biz, pure & simple.

Repulsive...but priceless. :-)

I did NOT watch his farewell to himself. I had to empty the litter box.


20 posted on 03/09/2005 7:01:56 PM PST by CarolTX (Onward through the fog)
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