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September 20, 2007
‘Fake But Accurate’ Rather Goes Round The Bend
Further evidence that discredited former CBS News anchor Dan Rather suffers from a virulent strain of BDS, known among conservatives as Bush Derangement Syndrome emerged this week. Not comforted by the accolades and lifetime achievement awards journalism elites continue to shower upon him, Rather announced Wednesday that he filed a lawsuit against the Tiffany Network.
Rather claimed that CBS made him the scapegoat for the fraudulent story about President Bush’s service record with the Texas National Air Guard based on forged documents. He asserted that the network jettisoned him from the anchor chair “to pacify the White House” and because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’”
Rather also charged that Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the George H. W. Bush administration, one of the two panelists investigating the story, the other being former Associated Press president and CEO Louis Boccardi produced a biased report on the Rathergate affair.
In my book, “The Great Media War: A Battlefield Report”, I detailed my involvement as a White House correspondent in the unraveling of the failed political takedown of President Bush on the eve of his re-election campaign. In the chapter, “Shock and Awe, Shocking and Awful”, I reported that my source inside CBS News pointed me toward Mary Mapes as the key player in what later became one of the biggest media scandals in American history. I broke the story about Mapes on Sean Hannity’s radio show, identifying her as the procurer of the phony documents.
I also wrote about the near-meltdown of CBS’ News Washington Bureau and the split between factions loyal to Rather and insurgents that saw the scandal as an opportunity to topple the tyrannical and narcissistic anchor. The announcement of the “independent” investigation of the story conducted by the network’s own lawyers served as a firebreak to tamp down the fiasco, not an effort get to the bottom of it.
If anything, the Thornburg-Boccardi report whitewashed the events surrounding the “flawed” story. Employees of CBS coordinated with members of the Kerry campaign to damage Bush, but the report dismissed the many incestuous connections between the two groups. It also downplayed the perspective from which individuals at CBS News reported the story. CBS White House correspondent John Roberts told me of his belief that the forged documents came from Karl Rove, that essentially Bush’s political advisor baited the network into launching a political attack against his own candidate in order to discredit the story and the news organization. After confronting White House counselor Dan Bartlett with the TANG documents, Roberts reported back to Washington Bureau chief Janet Leissner that because the White House did not dispute the authenticity of the documents they must have been legitimate.
I welcome Dan Rather’s lawsuit since it might provide the opportunity to take a fresh look at how the Old Media and the Democrats act as one to achieve political power. The coordination between The New York Times and MoveOn.org is not an anomaly – it is standard operating procedure.
The Great Media War is the struggle of the Right to get fair representation in the media and the Left desperately trying to hold on to its once-complete monopoly. It affects every aspect of news events and how they are presented - if at all - to the American people.
Posted by jeffgannon at September 20, 2007 08:55 AM
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