Why it's important to remember Rathergate

American Thinker ^ | October 5, 2020 | David Lanza

[T Ruth]

An important anniversary [is today]. This anniversary carries implications for how we receive news, how political campaigns are conducted, and the credibility of almost everything we see or hear from the media.

On September 8, 2004, CBS’s “60 Minutes” used forged government documents as the basis for a story that attacked the military record of then-President George W. Bush. It was bad enough that CBS used forged government documents, but what made it worse was that CBS aired this story during the presidential election and timed the airing to coincide with the rollout of Democrat John Kerry’s “favorite son” campaign theme. CBS thus provided the “news” upon which the Democrat candidate based his attack ads. The CBS story was quickly disproven …

The battle over the truth became a story in itself. The truth about the font spread like wildfire through the blogosphere and the internet, quickly picking up steam. CBS, Rather and the left clung to their story as long as they could. They even invented the “fake but accurate” standard to defend the forged documents. CBS and its surrogates belittled the bloggers but ended up making them famous. Conservative bloggers would embrace the “pajamas” epithet thrown at them during the battle – some of whom still use it today. ...

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Why is a 2004 scandal at CBS still relevant 16 years later? Even without Dan Rather, the network has not truly changed. The other networks are just as bad – if not worse. Rathergate serves as one example of what the establishment media do. They lie. They lie regularly, and they lie during election years to help elect Democrats. ... Celebrating the anniversary has a cleansing effect that leaves us stronger. We develop herd immunity to future lies because we commemorate this one prominent lie.

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[bolding added]

[cnsmom]

Yes and that was why the Democrats got desperate and tapped Rather.