Posted on 05/20/2006 4:28:15 PM PDT by MindBender26
This just in from source at Black Rock:
He/She is at pre-season party in The Hamptons. Other CBSers (The Suits) are there as well.
The Suits confirmed:
Ran Rather's contract at CBS expires in August. He has not been offered ANY type of renewal. There may be some tiny dollar (the exact fee never to be disclosed) face-saving deal but that's it, Dan is out.
This comes after he "resigned" from CBS Evening News position last year in an attempt to stop the bloodletting of advertisers at CBS. As we all know, the primary cause was not so much Rather's broadcasting the original phony Bush "Recordsgate" story but Rather's insistence, way beyond anything or any time that was reasonable, that the story was valid.
From the moment FR's pajamahadeen pointed out the many irrefutable technical flaws in the supposed documents, it was dead meat as a journalistic piece. Rather slew himself by sticking with what was obviously a phony story designed to attack the President and help Kerry.
In addition, Rather's acceptance of a $20,000 fee to speak to Texas Democrats was another quiet nail in his CBS coffin. In journalism circles, that is a huge no-no. Some stations forbid their employees to even contribute to campaigns and fire offenders In this case, Rather was taking $ from the Texas Dems!
After Evening News, Rather was to contribute to "60 Minutes II" on Wednesdays but that show had ratings lower than the radio calls of the Roto-Rooter truck dispatcher.
How significant is this? 25 years after he left the anchor chair, Walter Cronkite is still on some income at CBS.
Rather is out on his ear.
There will be much more on this in MSM (including some severe spinning) in weeks to come, but FR had it first!
"FR's pajamahadeen..."
***
Ah, I love that expression.
Dan thought his job was speaking untruth to unpower.
Or are they repressed rumors?
From 2001...
Dan Rather, Democratic Fundraiser
Gee, what took 'em so long?
Poor Dan Dan, the Bastar*ized fake but accurate newsman.
It was FRee Republic's finest moment.
Thank you, Buckhead!
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Why is WALTER CRONKITE still on the CBS payroll, even though he personally called for our 11 Southern States to SECEDE from our Union in an Address before a London World Conference in the year 2000?
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That's the best laugh I've had today..........
The "Dan will continue to do special reports" fig leaf was the same fiction that was used with the first victim of persisting-in-analog-fabrications-in-a-digital-age, CNN's Peter Arnett.
Arnett built an entire career on fabrications, and fabrications of atrocity stories specifically. Most Americans know the old Vietnam line, "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," but don't know that it was an Arnett fabrication.
When he became a senior correspondent, he was notorious for staying in the rear and taking video from stringers who had been out at the war and claiming it as his own. Since he hadn't actually reported the story, he'd make up one that matched the shots he had -- and made the US troops look bad.
Other news outfits knew he was doing it, so his certainly did. I believe he was with ABC at the time. (Horst Faas of AP has, or had, a lot of good Arnett stories... they don't reflect well on Peetah's work ethic or journalistic integrity).
Arnett was always held back at other news outfits, but when he joined CNN he arrived in the perfect location, from his point of view: a "news" organization whose values were immediacy, "punch," and leftism. During the Gulf War, he embedded with the Iraqi ministry of information and he, instead of Baghdad Bob, was their face to the world.
During that period Arnett was caught publicizing two phony atrocities, the "baby milk factory" bombing and the "annihilation of a civilian convoy on the Jordanian border." Both of these targets comprised military targets that were deliberately and knowingly misrepresented by Arnett as proscribed targets. He admitted this after the war, but claimed that he did not have any choice.
Interesting fact: CNN ran stuff that had been passed by Coalition censors with prominent disclaimers, before and after the footage and in the crawl. Stuff that actually came from the Iraqi ministry, otherwise of unknown provenance, and stuff shot by Arnett's crew under Iraqi military supervision ("shoot the burning trucks... do not shoot these tanks... don't photograph those bodies till we take uniforms off...") ran with no disclaimer.
Anyway, Arnett's career actually benefited from his Gulf War fraud. What caught him was the "Tailwind" story where he and producers Jack Smith and April Oliver fabricated a tale of US atrocities in Vietnam (again) by getting a bunch of wannabees, phonies and drug addicts to lie about an operation that most of them weren't on. The one guy who was, was a doper who left the Army by being sentenced to prison, R. Van Buskirk... and who previously had written a book about the selfsame operation, with himself as hero (!) but none of the atrocity allegations (and it was the kind of book where he'd have put them in if he had the idea before April Oliver gave it to him).
Arnett, Oliver and Smith made a very serious mistake, too. They asked an old SOG NCO, a bunch of innocuous questions about NBC training. Then they edited the sound so that he was responding to different questions.
This is not a direct quote but a sample of how they did it. (Raw video):
OLIVER: Every soldier trains with a gas mask?
OLD HERO: Yeah, we carried it in the container, and when they called "gas!" you had five seconds to get it on.
(Edited):
ARNETT: You had gas masks because you planned to use nerve gas to kill the prisoners?
OLD HERO: Yeah, we carried it in the container, and when they called "gas!" you had five seconds to get it on.
(This is by the way, a routine "Sixty Minutes" technique, used in almost every interview, although seldom so blatantly. Many of the interviews are done by off-camera producers and writers).
Personally, I knew MSG OLD HERO. I think I would go to extremes not to ever misrepresent anything he said. I would not want to spend the rest of my life wondering if today was the day he would come to have a discussion about it.
Anyway, the upshot was that, as with CBS and its smear of Westmoreland, the truth came out rather quickly because the living still remember. CNN hired medial lawyer Floyd Abrams to investigate and he found severe abuses by the three stooges, Arnett, Smith, and Oliver, and all were fired, although with star Arnett an announcement that he would be doing special reports was made, but oddly enough, till his contract ran out he never again appeared on air (well, on cable) for CNN.
Unfortunately the SF Association injected itself into the victims' lawsuit and forced an unfavourable settlement. CNN and Time got off with a retraction, and a promise to do an accurate documentary on the mission -- a promise that they never intended to fulfill, and didn't. But that ended much as Dan's fabrication did -- exposed and discredited.
The media in general loathe, fear, and misunderstand the military. That means that they think a cheesy fabrication like Tailwind or the Bush memos can fly. They see their job as advocacy in an adversarial system, not as reportage; they see their customers not as the consumers who read or watch their product, but the political and social elites they serve and aspire to join.
In short, they are some pretty sad excuses for human beings. "Courage!" ?? He wouldn't know it if he saw it on display. I've had days where I've seen more courage than all the reporters in all recorded history have displayed. Still do.
We'll see you in hell, Gunga Dan.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Dan has it all wrong in the Castro pic, Dio... the aide is supposed to stand behind and to the left so he doesn't interfere with his commander's returning a salute.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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Thank you for your CLARITY, CN18F.
Having personally seen War Correspondent PETER ARNETT arrive in the Valley of Death known as South Vietnam's IA DRANG Valley of November 1965...
..I was fully aware that he too was witnessing the selfless heroism of the American Soldier under fire at the 1st Major Battle of the Vietnam War. A Battle being shown tonight on the FoX News Channel's 'War Stories' OLIVER NORTH TV Program.
Later on, after PETER ARNETT's CNN media Tailwind assault on the American Soldier, my call into RUSH LIMBAUGH guest host TONY SNOW was made to explain to the American People how much this Media liar just knew better than to do what he was doing against us. And how much he needed to be fired by CNN.
Months later PETER ARNETT was gone from CNN, just like another TV Media liar DAN RATHER is now in the process of being forced to leave CBS.
Finally.
http://www.lzxray.com
(IA DRANG Website)
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm
(IA DRANG Pictures)
.
.
...One standout Battle of IA DRANG example of the selfless heroism of the American Soldier,
...Lt. RICK RESCORLA,
...selflessly saved 100's of lives in that 1965 Valley of Death and...
...1,000's of other lives at the World Trade Center during the Bombing of 1993 and the Airstrikes of 9/11/2001. Giving up his own life as a nearly vacant Tower II came crashing down on him in the process before the entire world.
http://www.RickRescorla.com
(See: 'The Statue' Pictures)
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24361
.
There is no love lost there. Rather did all he could to push Cronkite out. Rather got it done. You will not find Cronkite coming to Rathers defense.
In Singlaub v. CNN et al re: Tailwind, friend represented Singlaub in his action against CNN.
Got big numbers.
Says it all...
Thanks for a great ping.
Thanks for the ping!
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