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thedrifter
11-24-04, 06:43 AM
Dan Rather: Not Good Enough

November 24, 2004


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by J.B. Williams

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As one of my good friends so kindly reminded me, CBS’s decision to dump Dan Rather from his throne at the Evening News is too little, and it comes way too late!

It’s not personal, I don’t even know Dan Rather. It isn’t even political, it’s much bigger than any individual politician or even any particular political party. It’s about something much more important than Dan, CBS’s ratings, a single election, or anyone’s individual political ideology.

Partisans on all sides debate among other things, who has control of America. Some think it’s the federal government, others think it is corporations and their lobbyists, many think it is Union bosses and trial lawyers, and yet others think it is the UN or the Illuminati…

They are all wrong! As the Democratic Party is still trying to decipher and understand, the American people control America, as was just proven in the 2004 election. Against enormous odds of huge financial and media support for Kerry, the people voted against those who thought money alone could win the highest seat in the land.

However, who controls the American voter?

The most powerful single entity in America is the massive institution known as the mainstream press. Whoever controls public opinion, controls those who control America. In America, that is the mainstream press.

We have laws, even Constitutional Amendments that guarantee a free press, able to report anything they want, in opposition to even the highest office in the land, at odds with the entire government if they wish, without risk of repudiation or revenge. The mainstream press is exempt from responsibilities that even our politicians must adhere to, making the press the most powerful institution in our land.

But what happens when that power is abused, the way it was when Dan Rather and CBS attempted to interfere with the 2004 election by running with a hatchet job story against a sitting President, using bogus forged government documents in an attempt to mislead the American voter into removing that President from office?

Our entire system of self-governance is at risk of collapse, that’s what. If any member of the press can print anything they want, without regard for truth, even if presented in a “balanced” fashion, then the people who control America will make decisions based on bogus information, and bogus information will lead to bad decisions almost every time.

In 2004, the effort failed, in great part due to the advent of the Internet, (special thanks to Al Gore). As Rather put it, hundreds of part-time Internet sleuths, at their computers in their underwear, quickly unraveled the bogus story hours after Rather aired his coup attempt on 60 Minutes.

Had this happened anywhere but America, Rather would have lost his job on the spot, been investigated for his role in the forging of government documents, and most likely, ended up in prison.

In some parts of the world, he would have been dragged from his throne by his hair, stoned to death in the streets and set afire. If he had behaved this way with his old friend Saddam Hussein, he would have had his eye’s gouged out, his fingers cut off, and his tongue ripped out by a log chain tied to the back bumper of Qusay’s Hummer.

But in America, the revelation that Rather attempted to single handedly take down a sitting President with a bogus news story met with a collective yawn from an electorate that has become too accustomed to bogus left-wing anti-American reporting from the mainstream press.

Many still think this incident is an isolated accident, even though Brokaw responded with concern for how the White House was trying to smear Dan Rather, and Jennings doesn’t think Rather should be held to account by all those horrible bloggers that seem to have it out for Dan.

The bottom line is this, the American people, not just conservatives, not just liberals, all American’s have a Right to expect truthful unfiltered and unbiased reporting of just the fact as they exist, not as someone wants to invent them. The American media has an obligation to deliver just that, nothing more and nothing less.

When they breach this trust with the public, heads should roll, and in the case of CBS, they didn’t.

Even now, this maneuver dethroning Rather is limited to taking him from the nightly Evening News only, leaving him with full employment and in a position to continue delivering less than honest reports via both 60 Minutes programs, which is where the problem began.

That just is not good enough! It is too little too late, and in no way improves the viability of CBS as a reliable source of information.

The time for this type of maneuver has passed. Nothing short of full retirement for Rather will be good enough, and that still leaves Producer Mary Mapes, who fielded the bogus story, and the rest of the 60 Minutes II staff to deal with.

No sir, not good enough at all!

CBS was finally forced to launch its own internal investigation into Rathergate to avoid an outside investigation. That investigation has been underway for two months now, as if we all don’t already know what happened, and still there is no report of how such a thing could happen. That means, the investigation is likely to continue until they find a way to excuse the act, or sweep it under the rug once the American people have forgotten all about it and moved on to other things.

Not good enough, not by a long shot. If CBS can’t do better than this, I’m afraid we simply have no use for CBS. If CBS wants to continue to protect Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, they will have to do it all the way to their corporate grave. Not good enough in deed!!!

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/w/jbwilliams/2004/williams112404.htm

Ellie