I'm sorry I didn't get to do the Rathergate update before the weekend hit. It was a really busy weekend for me so I didn't get to do much blogging.
As it stands now CBS has put together an Independent Panel to investigate what went wrong in the reporting process. I am still non-plussed about this. After all an independent panel also found that CBS did nothing wrong with the Janet Jackson super-bowl fiasco.
Regardless of what this panel finds Dan Rather should burn. There are rumors that he will retire in the spring. But I hope he gets nailed before that. He obviously was trying to smear our President during an election. And then tried to tell us we were imagining things and we should not question him. In general I don't like arrogant people, but someone who insists on insulting the intelligence of Americans just cheeses me off. You know it's bad when Jayson Blair starts dissing you.
I don't know where this will end up or how it will play out. But it won't be good for CBS from a journalistic perspective. As I see it one of their biggest problems right now wasn't that they used the fake memos. If it were then they could just claim they were duped. The problem is that they aired an incredibly one sided opinion piece. Even Op-Ed columnists have to acknowledge that there are opposing points of view and different interpretations of facts than the one they are presenting. But in the infamous 60 Minutes piece opposing views were completely ignored. There was no mention of Killian's wife or son. No mention of other guard members who knew Bush while in the service. No interview of the secretary who would have written the memos until they found out she could be counted on to say that Bush is 'evil'. They ignored the fact that the General who was supposedly putting pressure on Killian to "sugarcoat" Bush's review was already retired. The story was so one-sided that they basically have no avenue left to regain journalistic credibility. Compounding this complication is the fact that it's becoming increasingly obvious that high ranking Democrats were involved in the process.
