Sidney Blumenthal: Dan Rather, CBS, and George W Bush

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10290

Dan Rather, CBS, and George W Bush
by Sidney Blumenthal | Oct 4 2007


Dan Rather's complaint against CBS and Viacom, its parent company, filed in New York state court on 19 September 2007 and seeking $70 million in damages for his wrongful dismissal as CBS Evening News anchor, has aroused hoots of derision from a host of commentators. They've said that the former anchor is "sad", "pathetic", "a loser", on an "ego" trip and engaged in a mad gesture "no sane person" would do, and that "no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true."

If the court accepts his suit, however, launching the adjudication of legal issues such as breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference with contract, it will set in motion an inexorable mechanism that will grind out answers to other questions as well. Then Rather's suit will become an extraordinary commission of inquiry into a major news organisation's intimidation, complicity and corruption under the Bush administration. No congressional committee would be able to penetrate into the sanctum of any news organisation to divulge its inner workings. But intent on vindicating his reputation, capable of financing an expensive legal challenge, and armed with the power of subpoena, Rather will charge his attorneys to interrogate news executives and perhaps administration officials under oath on a secret and sordid chapter of the Bush presidency.

snip//

"The story was true"

Dan Rather has always been an uncomfortable figure, sometimes abrasive, sometimes strangely inappropriate or baffling, given to rustic rhetoric at odd moments, and sometimes and suddenly lapsing into teary sentimentality or bursts of patriotic doggerel. Since his confrontations as the correspondent covering the Nixon White House, conservatives have targeted him as a symbol of the despised "liberal media". However idiosyncratic, Rather stood for the remnants of CBS's tradition of speaking truth to power, as Edward R Murrow did finally about Senator Joseph McCarthy and Walter Cronkite did finally about the Vietnam war and Watergate. The corporate unease with Murrow's outspokenness, leading to the cancellation of his weekly programme, See It Now (depicted in the recent film Good Night, and Good Luck), was little different from the unease with Rather a half-century later. At last, the corporation's necessity for demonising Rather coincided with the long-standing conservative demonising.

When CBS replaced the edgy Rather with the sugary Katie Couric as anchor of the Evening News, it imagined it had solved its problem, its "errors". The news would get softer, the Republicans in control of the White House and Congress would be nicer, Viacom would grab more media, and ratings would climb. Thus, dismissing Rather would yield untold dividends. Unfortunately for CBS's visionaries, none of that has worked out as planned. Couric simply lacks basic journalistic instincts and skills, and the CBS Evening News is at rock-bottom in ratings and sinking farther.

Rather could have simply allowed the statute of limitations to run out, lived off his millions, and faded away. But the incident ate at him. On one level, the Bush National Guard story is about Bush and the National Guard. On another, of course, it is about Rather's reputation. But on yet another it is about CBS's overwhelming desire to please the Bush White House and censor itself. The White House campaign against Rather has been so successful that many in the national press corps behave as though in mouthing its talking points they are demonstrating their own independent thought.

On 20 September, the day after he filed his suit, Rather said, "The story was true". Rather's suit may turn into one of the most sustained and informative acts of investigative journalism in his long career. He is not going gentle into that good night.

but I'm not sure the man is playing with a full deck. But not because he's suing over being shitcanned by Viacom. I keep remembering him on the Letterman show shortly after 9/11, blubbering about how bush was his president and he would do anything the chimp asked him to. It was embarrassing, even Dave was taken aback by rather's display. Then after he was confronted with the phony disputes over the fonts in the bush national guard he apologized for the story.

Now he says the story was true. Why the fuck didn't he stick up for himself in 2004? We might be well on the road to cleaning the bush stain from our national conscience instead of worrying about what else these asswipes can fuck up in the next year.

Fuck 'em

But better late than never.

First of all, Rather was inside the belly of the beast. He already knows where the bodies are buried.

Now, secondly, he has the power of "discovery." It's a strange part of the legal process that allows your enemy (the plaintiff, here Rather), wide ranging access to your most intimate information -- basically free reign to forage through your file cabinets. Not all of it can be introduced, but almost all of it can be discovered.

Rather may be strange, but his basic commitments seem sound, and with what he knows and what he's about to learn, he could become the greatest, most knowledgeable media critic of all time.