In commenting on the Dan Rather fiasco last week and the week before that, the Monitor was remiss in not mentioning the revolutionary role played by the Internet – specifically, the army of tenacious webloggers who began exposing Rather almost as soon as his fallacious ’60 Minutes’ story on George Bush and the Texas Air National Guard aired earlier this month.
Rather and the rest of the so-called mainstream media are slowly waking up to the realization that the broadcast networks and a handful of newspapers no longer enjoy a monopoly on the news. With a multiplicity of news outlets to choose from, and with the Internet serving as the eyes and ears of an increasingly skeptical public, the savvy consumer of news knows better than to accept as undisputed truth whatever some talking head is pushing in his allotted 22 minutes of air time between commercial breaks.
Walter Cronkite’s signature sign-off – “And that’s the way it is” – was, even in the prehistoric 1960’s and 70’s, an empty boast based on a false premise. Today, any news reader uttering such nonsense would be laughed off the set.
That’s not to say, however, that old-line broadcast and newsprint journalists are at all happy about any of this, as witness their grumbling about bloggers in pajamas operating without benefit of editors and fact-checkers. (You know, like those exacting fact-checkers at ’60 Minutes’ or, for that matter, at The New York Times, which in 2002 ran nearly 3,000 corrections ranging in seriousness from the trivial to the perception-altering.)
Already there’s been a circling of the wagons, at least to some degree, around Dan Rather. While some reporters have been forthright in criticizing CBS and ’60 Minutes’ not just for going with the National Guard story but for the obvious political partisanship that drove the decision to do so – Newsweek’s Howard Fineman observed that “if Roger Ailes and Fox had done something like this, you know, the world would be on fire” – others are praising Rather and sobbing over a blown opportunity to put the hated Bush away once and for all.
“Like O. J. Simpson’s infamous “struggle” to squeeze his big hand into the glove, the letter was just a lousy piece of evidence that should never have been produced in court,” groused Washington Post columnist Tina Brown. “Now because CBS, like Marcia Clark, screwed up the prosecution, Bush is going to walk.”
“[Rather] is a towering journalist,” gushed ABC’s Diane Sawyer. “We all know this,” she told CNN’s Larry King. “We live and die by headlines, all of us here. But let us never forget he’s the guy who gets up out of the anchor chair and goes to Afghanistan. He’s the guy who could have the cushy assignment, but he goes to the hurricane. He is an honest-to-goodness reporter. If anybody is hard on themselves, it is him first. And he is a giant in this business and I know he operates without fear or favor.”
Aaron Brown, the lachrymose anchor of CNN’s NewsNight, mumbled in his inimitable manner that “There is not an honest reporter in the country today, not an honest news organization that hasn’t in the last few days, when looking at the story of how the now CBS discredited documents on the president’s National Guard service, said “there but for the grace of God go I,” excepting that some partisans will see it otherwise, will see willful deception on the part of CBS. Smarter and more reasoned heads know better.”
Former UPI reporter Helen Thomas, who has called Bush the worst president ever, described Rather as a “magnificent reporter” and insisted that “the real issue is why doesn’t the president tell us the truth” Why doesn’t he put out all the documents” Because he can’t, because there are too many gaps.”
The ever-ridiculous Geraldo Rivera, meanwhile, provided some unintended comic relief with his statement that “Dan’s a friend of mine and I feel very badly for him. We all make mistakes.” Rather and Rivera – journalists of a feather, comrades in error.