Abstract Musings

Earlier, I linked to Peggy Noonan’s farewell to Dan Rather, whom she worked for from 1981-1984. Ms. Noonan is quite forgiving of Dan Rather and cuts him some–make that, a lot–of slack for the political leanings of his journalistic career.

Beldar thinks she is being too kind (emphasis in the original).

Dan Rather and his cohorts didn’t just make a mistake. They didn’t just have a lapse. They didn’t just let their biases color their reporting. They didn’t just make an error in judgment. Instead, they conspired together with should-be felons, with forgers, to pass off as genuine, as truthful “news,” a set of bogus documents that defamed the record and the integrity of the President and in so doing, they fundamentally betrayed the entire reason for their profession’s existence. They actively hid the fact that their own hired experts were telling them before the first broadcast that the documents were fakes. Then they tried to demonize those (including me and my fellow bloggers) who’d helped expose their ploy, and to justify their lies as “fake but accurate.”

Peggy Noonan looks back at Dan Rather’s career:

If you were a young Dan Rather you knew which side was the side to be on. You knew which side your bosses were on. You knew which side would lead to your rise. And you knew which side would win.

It wasn’t exactly complicated. Every conservative in America in the last century, especially in the media and in the colleges, knew they would be dinged and damaged if they held to their beliefs. Every liberal in the media and the academy knew they could rise if they espoused liberal views. Dan wanted to rise.

Probably the worst moment in his career, because it was arguably the one most obvious in showing bias and a political agenda, was the time Dan tried to beat up George H.W. Bush live, on the “CBS Evening News,” over Iran-contra. Mr. Bush decked him instead, and with a question that reverberates: How would you like your whole career to be judged by one mistake? I do not doubt that CBS News that night thought it was going to take down a vice president, and wanted to. And was embittered by its failure. Which may have contributed to the years long, Ahab-like quest of producer Mary Mapes to bring down George W. Bush with documents it took bloggers less than 24 hours to reveal as fabrications.

Power Line links to Michael Barone’s latest column, where he chronicles Old media’s failed attempts to influence the election, and the role the blogosphere played in thwarting them.

Not so today. The ratings of the nightly newscasts have been on a downward trajectory since the 1980 campaign, as voters have been presented with other means of following the news. New Media has emerged: talk radio, Fox News Channel, the proliferation of Internet weblogs, which together make up the blogosphere. The left liberalism that is the political faith of practically all the personnel of Old Media is now being challenged by the various political faiths of New Media. Old Media no longer controls the agenda.

But it tries. At two crucial points in the campaign, Old Media used leaks from dubious sources to run stories intended to hurt the Bush campaign. The first was Dan Rather’s Sept. 8 “60 Minutes” story on Bush’s Texas Air National Guard record based on documents supplied by Texas Bush-hater Bill Burkett. CBS, admirably, posted the documents on its websites, and within 14 hours bloggers — led by frontpage.com, powerlineblog.com and littlegreenfootballs.com — had demonstrated that these purported 1972 documents had been produced on Microsoft Word. CBS’s document experts, it turned out, had refused to authenticate them. Not until Sept. 20 did Rather acknowledge the documents were dubious. The story hurt Rather and CBS, not Bush.

Old media expended a tremendous amount of effort to unseat President Bush, and ultimately, utterly failed, bringing down its own reputation and seriously tarnishing its credibility. Barone touched on this in his previous column:

This year his job rating has hovered around 50 percent or below. He has been the target all year of vicious and biased coverage from old media, many if not most of whose personnel saw their job as removing this scourge from the presidency. The 60 Minutes story about Bush’s Air National Guard service, which was based on obviously forged documents, is only the most egregious example. Old media have headlined violence in Iraq and reported almost nothing about positive developments there; they highlighted the charges of self-promoter Joseph Wilson and spoke nary a word when they were proved bogus; they have given good economic news far less positive coverage, studies show, than they did when Bill Clinton was in office.

Yet the results of this election closely resemble the 2002 House results. Bush beat Kerry 51 to 48 percent; the popular vote for the House appears to be about 51 to 47 percent Republican. Voters knew the stakes–polls showed majorities thought this was an important and consequential election–and both candidates had plenty of opportunity to make their cases. Thanks to the 527s, more money was apparently spent against Bush than for him. So the results cannot be dismissed as an accident. We are now a 51 percent nation, a Republican majority, as, once again in America, love has proved stronger than hate.

This election will be remembered for the citizen journalists in the blogosphere, who kept the public better informed, and brought out stories which otherwise wouldn’t have seen the light of day.

It seems that CBS was delaying the investigation into Ra^thergate in order to avoid having to discipline its employees. From Broadcasting & Cable:

Pre-election, the feeling in some quarters at CBS was that if Kerry triumphed, fallout from the investigation would be relatively minimal. The controversial piece’s producer, Mary Mapes, would likely be suspended or fired, but a long list of others up the chain of command—from 60 Minutes II executive producer Josh Howard, to Rather and all the way up to news division President Andrew Heyward—would escape more or less unscathed.

Here’s hoping they get what they deserve.

(From Rathergate.com)