Dan Rather on Bias: The GOP Is Biased; He’s Without Fault
In an attempt to resuscitate his reputation as an honest news broker, former CBS anchor Dan Rather seems determined to prove that he is a victim of right-wing bias at the network.
Rather, you'll recall, was pushed out the door over his September 2004 60 Minutes piece that alleged President Bush received preferential treatment while in the Texas Air National Guard. In the story's bloody aftermath, it turned out that not only were smoking-gun documents fakes but Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, lied that they had been authenticated by experts. Rather resigned from CBS and now is suing his former network for violating his contract and impugning his reputation.
After Rather spent $2 million in his vanity lawsuit—and cost CBS the same—most of his lawsuit has been chucked out of court. But Rather has unearthed the following: that in selecting its investigative panel, CBS asked Republicans whether former GOP Attorney General Dick Thornburgh would be deemed a credible cochair. The Times claims Rather "may be getting something for his money," but I'm hard-pressed to see what that is.
Here, then, was the situation in September 2004: A news organization, news program, and news anchor, all long believed to be left leaning (and in the case of Mapes, confirmed left leaning), released a fraudulent and damaging story about the GOP's nominee in the final weeks of a presidential campaign. Credibility was rightly at issue, and CBS launched a public investigation.
For the investigation to be believed, of course, it needed leadership from someone aggrieved Republican viewers would deem credible. (As Andrew Heyward, the network's former president, stated in a deposition by Rather's lawyers, "CBS news, fairly or unfairly, had a reputation for liberal bias," and "the harshest criticism was obviously going to come from the right.")
At the same time, such a person couldn't be just a reflexive right-winger who would summarily punish CBS. That's why the network rejected possible panel members like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Matt Drudge and settled on Thornburgh. And Thornburgh wasn't alone—his cochairman was Louis Boccardi, the former chief executive of the Associated Press and hardly a GOP operative.
So what were the conclusions of this commission that Rather says was politically motivated? As the Times notes, while the panel determined there was a "breakdown in standards by CBS in rushing the Bush segment to air," it found "no evidence of liberal bias in CBS' preparation of the segment."
That sounds awfully similar to Rather's own admission at the time:
. . . If I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
. . . We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
It's no secret that most newsrooms veer left (see Washington Post ombudsman Deb Howell's admission on Sunday), but journalists insist they are capable of reporting without political bias. Many of them do rise to the occasion. By the same token, however, is it not possible that a Republican former attorney general can do the same?
In the end, the only hack appears to be Rather. In his view, anyone right leaning is inherently fatally biased, and his own journalistic failures are someone else's faults—for which he claims to deserve $70 million.
Tags: CBS | Republicans
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Reader Comments
Bush Shirked His duty
The smoking gun memos were never proven to be "fakes." The experts hired by the show confirmed that the memos were consistent with the era and could have been produced at the relevant time, but they couldn't thoroughly authenticate them because they were copies. The kangaroo court hired by CBS after the fact was not able to debunk the documents, either. Moreover, the 60 Minutes broadcast confirmed yet again that Bush got preferential treatment to get into the National Guard, sloughed off his duties and received preferential treatment getting out of the National Guard, or did somebody fake the interview with Ben Barnes, who admitted he pulled the strings to get Bush into the Guard?
Not so fraudulent
If you completely remove the 12 1/2 minute 60 Minutes II broadcast, which mostly featured an interview with Ben Barnes, you are still left with a pile of evidence from other news investigations that Bush got special treatment to get into the Air Guard and even more special treatment in order to get an honorable discharge despite the official records showing huge gaps in his attendance record, in addition to his blowing off his physical for no good reason.
And the central foundations of the forgery charges, that proportional printing was an extremely rare and expensive proposition in the early 1970's and that the memos can be easily recreated with Microsoft Word, have turned out to be utter nonsense: *most* of the military memos that can be found on the Internet, along with similarly formatted personal letters from the the early 70's and before, are proportionally printed. It turns out that proportional printing was a common feature with pre-Selectric typewriters, as well as the early word processors; and only one of the 4 memos CBS used, the "CYA" one, can be even approximately recreated with modern Times Roman (and not that well) -- the rest vary from very bad to not even close, which is sort of what you would expect to get if the memos were created with an old "Times-like" or "Roman-like" font.
Good for Dan Rather that his lawsuit is drawing out damaging info regarding CBS behavior, including giving in to right wing demands.
Right Wing Creditibility.
Sam
You do a disservice to both Conservatives and the Republican Party itself, and i think to yourself, by trying to put spin on ANYTHING about the mis-deeds of the outgoing administration. The only option left for Conservatives at large is to admit as gracefully as is possible in the circumstance that this issue and "W" are both dead meat. The last eight years of abuse of power and corruption speak for themselves. All the right can and should do is "Let the dead bury the dead". The rest of us are ready to move on and if the Republican Party is unwilling to come along it will wither and die.
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