So today Dan Rather apparently joined the ranks of right wing Internet partisans and sort of conceded the documents were fake. But Rather can’t help do a little CYA himself with this embarassing lie in his non-apology,
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.
Hmmm…this is what Rather apparently thinks “good faith” means:
- Treating a known anti-Bush partisan, Bill Burkett, as an “unimpeachable source”
- Failing to interview Lt. Killian’s widow or son
- Ignoring the document experts who told CBS that there were problems with the memos, while exagerrating what its signature expert Marcel Matley and document expert James Pierce actually said about the validity of the doucments
- Giving the White House the documents three hours before broadcast and then claiming that since the White House didn’t disupte the authenticity in those 180 minutes that this was evidence they were authentic
- Slamming as right wing partisans Internet critics who established within 24 hours of the 60 Minutes II broadcast that the documents were almost certainly fakes
- Stonewalling and insisting that there was no need for an internal CBS investigation, much less an independent investigation, for more than a week after it was abundantly clear that there were serious problems with the memos
It was kind of funny to see Rather ripping on Fox the other day when a Fox reporter tried to get his comments about the scandal. Fox has been a favorite whipping boy of liberals and leftists and an object of scorn for many media elites. But Rather has proven the most diehard critics of the “liberal media” correct in this case — Rather and CBS were so anxious to get a scoop that could have affected the upcoming presidential election that they appear to have put their ideological and intellectual blinders on and ran the story based on almost nothing in the way of verification, and then stubbornly insisted the story was true . . . had to be true . . . when it was clear to most everyone else that the Emperor was wearing no clothes.
I have friends who refuse to watch anything but Fox, arguing that they’re simply sick of the “liberal media’s” lies and distortions. I think that’s extreme, but it’s less so now thanks to Rather’s bizarre behavior which pretyt much confirmed every single conservative criticism of network news.