Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Rather Not

Jeff Jarvis puts the CBS bloodletting into perspective: “This is bigger than Dan Rather. This is bigger than CBS News. This is about the news and the new relationship -- the conversation -- journalism must learn to have with the public, or the public will go have it without them.” Meanwhile, Duncan Black, in a stretch, opines that "the entire saga [and others are] proof that there is no goddamn liberal media.”

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

The right wing is after Dan Rather and ignore the fact that he used 'fact checkers' who let him down!

Obviously, they are trying to focus on the fault rather than the story. We still don't have the full story on Bush's service, or lack thereof, and there are those who want to focus on the faulty story rather than finding the full story.

Anonymous said...

Repeatedly I am hearing that what happened in regard to Rather was all a set up from the beginning (????)Of course being just a plain old citizen of all this insanity....I have no way of knowing....But in view of the fact that our minds are being bombarded by lies and slander everyday....I have come to the conclusion that all of the media apparently cares little for the truth....depending of course on the person and who the powers that be want to bring down....

Wake up America!!!! We are well on our way to a feudal country where the few are already controlling the many!

Something to think about......Go to www.historyplace.com read what Nazi Reichmarshall Goering founder of the Gestapo said many years ago....it made me shutter...because I realize that history does repeat itself.

Anonymous said...

I saw the 60 Minutes episode that is now causing "heads to roll". Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of those people interviewed the secretary of the base commander who also had doubts about the memos' authenticity, but who simultaneously had NO doubts as to the gist of the memos themselves: That Bush was irresponsible, insubordinate, AWOL, etc.?

Anonymous said...

HERE IS THE QUOTE MADE BY GOERING....AND WORTH CONSIDERATION OF FORWARDING TO THOSE WHO ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PATH OUR COUNTRY IS TAKING.

"Naturally the common people don't want war;
neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany.
That is understood.
After all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy,
It is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy,
or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked. Denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

HERMANN WILHELM GOERING
NAZI REICHMARSHALL GOERING WAS THE FOUNDER OF THE GESTAPO WHO ORDERED REINHARD HEYDRICH (THE HANGMAN)TO EXTERMINATE THE JEWS

www.historyplace.com

Anonymous said...

It is time to get realistic about news anchors. They are often picked for their looks and ability to read a teleprompter without looking like they are. Holding Dan Rather accountable even presumes falsely that with makeup, nightly news duties and practice presentation of the news stories he really has that much say about the contents of the news.

It is sad this incident happened toward the end of his career, but I am glad Dan Rather retired from the Nightly News. I don't believe it had anything to do with the false news story the network was willingly mislead into for an exclusive breaking story. Heck, the man is in his 70's and should enjoy some time in semi-retirement and then retirement. Mike Rooney did the same type of slow exit strategy. Money doesn't do you much good, if you don't have time to enjoy the fruits of it, because you waited too long to retire and death beat you to retirement.

Anonymous said...

If Dan Rather dad erred about a Demcratic candidate,the issue would have been forgotten.Now that the right wing controls & monopolizes the media,anyone that critisizes the current administration is considered amajor flaw.YUk,yuk! What's happened to honest journalism & an honest error....Who has really been able to carefully scrutinize the Bush,military record,with all the coverups.True journalism would demand a total & intense scrutiny of the entire issue,which to this day,has not been resolved.What has happened to the former CBS ,independence.It appears that CBS is now a part of the right wing monopoly!

Anonymous said...

No one yet has gone far enough in the investigation. Other than Dan Rather, maybe THE piece of paper was a fake but the content was true. The secretary said as much in her interview. Doesn't it make you think the reason all the fuss about this memo came from the fact that some one knew it was fake because that someone had the original destroyed? Why would anyone think Bush followed through on his enlistment,when until that time he had only done what he wanted to. Mediocre grades at Yale, party boy couldn't be bothered doing what the average young man was doing at the time, he was "special" he had to work in an election campaign.

Anonymous said...

Allow me to ask the burning question that I'm sure many wish to know. What happened to the issue regarding the SUBSTANCE of the CBS memo? Did or did not George W. Bush receive favored treatment in being allowed to "serve" (such as he did , or did not - - another burning question) in the Texas Nat'l Guard ? On TV, quite clearly, when the memo was revealed, Dan Rather interviewed a secretary close to the Bush situation who agreed with the assertions in the memo, but that was somehow lost in all the subsequent howling about "authenticity".

Does anyone in the media any longer even care about the central question now that the provenance of the memo is the hot issue that has led to the presumed downfall of Rather and the firing of four of his CBS associates ?

The notion that the media exists - - or once existed - - to reveal the true stories behind public events, is no longer the pertinent operating assumption. Since so many "- - - gates" have been the
preoccupation of the media starting with Richard Nixon's tenure in the White house, the print, TV , and
internet media outlets seem so totally immersed in exposing scandals, the real news is ignored in all the blather.

The most recent, "memogate", is a perfect example in which the media are now oh-so-terribly concerned about their honor, their good names, their presumed journalistic integrity, and their adherence to high standards of news gathering.

And yet, less than six years ago they threw all that concern out of the window and flushed themselves down the proverbial hopper in a total breakdown of honest journalistic practices during the entire decade of the 1990's with their crazed pursuit of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Blatantly false rumors, lies, fake stories, innuendo, and misrepresentations were seized on by nearly all the major media outlets - - among them the N.Y. Times, the Washington Post, and the L. A. Times leading the way - - and amplified 24/7 in all the newspapers and TV political talk shows. To many of us who regard American journalism as uselessly preoccupied with market share, TV ratings, obvious political bias [referring to FoxNews], and displaying journalistic hands as filthy as we have ever seen in our lifetimes, it is striking that now the media are worried about "cleaning up their act".

Hypocrisy and duplicity rule the media quite consistently nowadays.

Since about 1990 that flushing sound continues - - and very many of us simply no longer care if they disappear or are lost in a web of lies and banalities of their own making.

Sic Transit hogwash.
Francis V. Scalzi

Anonymous said...

ENOUGH! Why are we still discussing this miserable little story? Especially after we invaded a country, and started a war in which, so far, 100,000+ people were killed ....over "misinformation."

S.L.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Anonymous said...

Wow! Get out the purple Kool Aid. Doesn't it bother you that a news media lied? That it put out a story deliberately to influence an election when it wasn't verified? Doesn't it matter to you that in 2000 the same people called the state of Florida for Al Gore BEFORE the voters in the Panhandle even voted possibly resulting in the disenfranchisement of thousands of Republican and Independent voters who stayed home because the media told them their candidate lost?

What about the 2004 Exit Polls where the media flat out distorted the results to discourage Republican and Independent voters by telling them that their candidate was losing so miserably that they might as well stay home and forget it?

I know of one conservative TV station and that is FOX. The rest are in the pockets of the Democratic Party. Why is it ok to have Michael Moore do Farenheit 9/11 but not allow Mark Hyman to air the documentary on Kerry's suspicious service? Wow! You people are really one sided. Frankly, I want to see them both. I'll make up my own mind, thank you.

You don't have a problem with a foreign billionaire like George Soros dumping millions into an election and MoveOn.org? All of Hollywood is to the left! Give me a break!

I used to be a Democrat for 36 years, but after Bill and Hillary Clinton, the selling of our super computer technology to the Chinese, the selling of the Lincoln Bedroom to Russian mafia for campaign donations --all the stuff that led to the McCain-Feingold bill (debacle), James Carvelle, Clinton's draft dodging, blow jobs in the White House while Arafat waited in the Rose Garden, the suspicious deaths of Ron Brown and Vince Foster, drug trafficking at Mena Airpot, selling us out to the UN, and on and on and on....... was enough for me!!!!!!!!! Hey, why weren't you bent out of shape when Clinton deposed Milosovich for atrocities? We went to war then and you didn't see the Republicans whining and demonizing the effort. Is war and deposing murderous dictators only ok if a Democrat does it?

I am now an Independent and until the the party of the Communists and welfare recipients changes, that is where I will stay. Talk about separation of church and state? Two of the biggest mouths in the Democratic Party are REVERANDS Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson!!!I never hear the ACLU complain about that!!!!!!!!!!!

I like No Child Left Behind. Our teachers stink, they are union thugs and our public school graduates are dumbed down more than ever before. Our schools are filled with socialist and gay agendas and our teachers are more engaged in shaping social behavior than they are in teaching the basics--reading, writing and arithmetic.
My child doesn't need to understand why "Heather has 2 Mommies"--frankly, I don't give a damn. Use my tax dollars to teach them to do math so they can make change--a skill many cannot master.

I welcome the new non-union charter school in my community--I hope they give the powerful, do-nothing union teachers a run for their money before the Democrats get in there and squash them like a bug!! You people don't want freedom of speech and ideas if it isn't socialistic or marxist.

If you hate the doctrines on which our country was founded, why not go to Canada, Sweden, France? We, the majority, love our country just the way it is and there must be a lot of people who believe as I do or Kerry would have won!!!!!!

In God We Trust! God Bless America, and get rid of the ACLU and UN!
You complain about the war, well let's talk about Koffee Anan and the Jasques Cherauc stuffing their pockets with "Oil for Food" money while people starved? Notice the media says little about it because the Dems and you Communists love th UN! The UN is crooked, useless and irrelevant. The UN has been managing Dhafur! Good job there! Let's keep our 13 billion here at home!

And finally, as for Dan Rather, retire!!!! And Miss Mapes-you disgraced your profession. You allowed your political agendas to taint your journalism and it came back to bite you! Good riddance! I'll take Sean Hannity any day--I don't even mind Colmes. O"Reilly is enteraining, but all of you out there, think for yourselves. Believe half of what you see and little of what you hear. The country survived Clinton and it will survive Bush.

Global warming is a hoax with scientific proof and is designed to hamper American productivity. The earth controls itself and natural disasters curb population so all you Pro-Choicers out there and Zero Population promoters, the earth has it's ways of limiting our activity. How egotistical you are to believe that you can control or influence the primal forces of nature. Why do foolish men believe they are actually in control of anything? In God we trust....hm-m-m sounds like a plan to me!

Anonymous said...

i think it's ridiculous,though typical,that people point to this as a "liberal media"event.If it were,why did people lose their jobs?The facts in the story were true,yet the people lost their jobs.Now,let's look at other stories by this supposed"liberal media".There's the swift boat veterans for"truth",who turned out to be liars.Did anyone lose their jobs over that?How about troopergate,which turned out to be a pack of lies?No? Whitewater?Paula Jones?Kathleen Willey?etc,etc,etc.No jobs lost?only promotions you say?How can this be true of a "liberal media"? You get my point...

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.