Dan Rather’s sad suit

“the façade that was on the story”?I don’t understand what you are saying, Dan.

Harry: Yes, fixed. Thanks.

Bill: He has as much chance of getting $70 million as you or I do.

He may not get $70M, but he has a fair chance to extract something. The exhumation and dissection of this affair under oath in court would probably be harmful to executives still employed at CBS, as well as to CBS itself.How richly they and Rather deserve each other.Jeff Jarvis says it best:…right there is the problem with all this: the elevation of the reporter, the presenter, the hack — to use the better British terms — into overexposed, overpaid, undermanaged, self-important personality. And as the Times story notes, the new overpaid, overexposed personality in Rather’s chair isn’t helping the network either. The anchor model is not only broken, it’s dangerous. It produces Dan Rathers.Exactly.

Far from being “sad,” Rather’s complaint raises, in a very public forum in which truth is supposed to reign, some fundamental questions about contemporary journalism.For Rather’s cause of action to be proved, he’ll have to produce evidence of the inherent accuracy of the report on Bush in the Texas Air National Guard. Not the veracity of the documents; those have been discredited, although not proved to be outright forgeries. If the underlying truth of the allegations about Bush are proved, it will demonstrate just how deeply the right-wing attack on the press has succeeded, since virtually all reporting on the accuracy of the TexANG story centers on the purportedly faked documents and not on the essential truth of the report. To be sure, it’s Journalism 001 that a small rip in the cloak of credibility often renders the garment useless, or that credibility is like virginity in that you can only lose it once. Still, the shifting of the news reporting on the national guard story from Bush’s antics to a solitary aspect of a convincing chain of proof was a pretty good demonstration about how the right-wing complaining about the “main stream” media has altered coverage, changed perceptions and forced an aggressive press on the defensive — to the point where there was little skepticism over the appointment of a Bush family crony to “investigate” the document flap.Secondly, we have the aspects of the complaint that reflect on the upper management at CBS and Viacom and the willingness of corporate leaders to be downright Murdochian in their attempts to influence news coverage. Corporate interference in the news product will be an issue here, and as Rather said “let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”Rather was an employee. If he felt so strongly about the issue, he should have resigned rather than read a flak-drafted “apology” on the air as he claims he was directed to do by his superiors. We may also see some light on the issue of star-anchorman-as-narrator and the extent to which the news stars act as the mouthpiece for the reporting of others, performing as the aural and visual version of Page One.

Bill: He has as much chance of getting $70 million as you or I do.When mega millions goes over $100 million, I buy.Give me a chance at $70 million, then just show me the organ grinder and I’ll start dancing.

Let’s not forget that the CBS report on Bush’s National Guard service was essentially accurate, and, for that matter, old news, reported in the Boston Globe as far back as 2000. CBS not only botched its own report, but it took the entire issue off the table — no one wanted to touch it after that.

For what it’s worth, and forgive the Michael Vick metaphor, I sortof have a dog in this fight. Bill Burkett and I corresponded numerous times when he was shopping the national guard document storyto reporters, and based on what I saw, Dan Kennedy is correct: thestory is true, the facts are for real, but the doubts that wereraised about Burkett’s documents enabled the right wing to do what it does best– attack the messenger and change the subject away from the real question. Since then, there actually have been a couple of examples of typewriters from that period that DO type “superscript”, but having thoroughly discredited Mr Burkett (who, by his own admission, has long held grudges against Mr Bush, although that doesn’t necessarily mean Mr Burkett is a liar), nobody made any effort to re-visit the story. Meanwhile Dan Rather’s producer Mary Mapes got thrown under the bus, and Mr Rather– who has on occasion been known to excuse himself and blame others– was so vehemently attacked by the right wing noise machine that he never got a chance to tell his side… not that it would have done much good at that point. Any response he might have given would also have been attacked. I agree with his assessment that CBS buckled under White House pressure, and it did when the bio-pic about Reagan displeased the right. Few TV journalists, other than CNN’s Jack McCafferty or MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, are willing to call the White House on its lies, so the president and his minions can keep attacking any and all unpleasant messages and drown them out (or demonise them) easily.That said, Dan’s law suit stands little chance and really does looklike the last act of a desperate man. He says it’s about standing up for courageous investigative journalism– but has he forgotten how, right after 9/11, he too went on TV wearing the ubiquitous flag pin on his lapel and saying his job was to defend and support hispresident? “If the president says jump, I say ‘how high’,” was the quote, I believe. OMG– courageous journalism? Not so much. Dan, Ilove ya, but you should have stood up for investigative reporting long before filing your lawsuit.

Indeed, and perhaps answer the question – IF the facts were so manifest, why the NEED for the forgery?

Greg Palast … my pal? My, the interesting things that are said here. I think the first reporting on Bush’s National Guard non-service took place before Palast even set up shop in the U.S. But I’m not sure.