What's wrong with Dan Rather?

[USMCgrunt0331]

On a previous thread about defective vests i started, the subject somehow came to Dan Rather, and everybody had some pretty bad things to say about him. I was just wondering why everybody hates him so much and what he did to p!ss everyone off? I tried lookin up his Marine Corps career but couldn't really find anything.

[Osotogary]

USMCgrunt0331,
Hate Dan Rather? Think of Newsweek. They were both good at one time, to the point of reaching Icon status in their respective fields and then, somehow, they started reporting unfounded mis-information, which severely nicked away at their credibility. I don't know if hate is a good word to use but mistrust sure would be.

[CHOPPER7199]

AGREE GARY, MISTRUST SURE SOUNDS CORRECT, AS WITH THE W.M.D. THAT SURE IS ANOTHER STORY.

[arzach]

If memory serves me right, danny rather washed out as a Marine...went on to biased reporting of the VietNam War(along with a damn lotta other so called journalists), swung even farther left and attempted to smear Dubya. NewsWeek will never be held accountable for running a FALSE story about GitMo, they will in my mind, be unbelieveable henceforth! Reporting a story that is factual is the responsibility of the reporter...otherwise it becomes yellow journalism on the same level as the supermarket tabloids.

[USMCgrunt0331]

Why does everybody keep sayin he washed out as a Marine?

[OLE SARG]

Info I have, says he did. rather couldn't hack it as a man and/or a Marine. Apparently, he couldn't hack it as a journalist!!!!!!!!!
He kinda had two faces!!

SEMPER FI,
OLE SARG

[Osotogary]

This might shed some light.

Expert: Dan Rather Exaggerates Military Record
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2002
One of the nation’s top military researchers is angry that CBS News anchorman Dan Rather continues to exaggerate and make misleading statements about his military record.
The researcher, B.G. Burkett, says that Rather’s inaccaurate statements about his military service can be found in the new hit book "Bias,” written by veteran CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg.

Burkett, co-author of the book "Stolen Valor,” a history of the media’s portrayal of the Vietnam conflict, says he’s tired of Rather’s double-talk and hypocrisy.

Case in point are Rather’s claims in "Bias.” Goldberg's book details a confrontation he had with Rather over the anchorman's compulsive liberal bias.

Goldberg recounts that when he told the network star in 1996 of his upcoming Wall Street Journal op-ed piece citing a specific CBS News report as an example of left-wing bias, Rather replied he was "getting viscerally angry about this.”

"Angry I was expecting,” Goldberg tell his readers. "What came next, I wasn’t.

"Rather’s voice started quivering, and he told me how in his young days, he had signed up with the Marines – not once, but twice!”

This is not the first time Rather has hid behind the flag and his own military service claims to deflect criticism of his reporting, Burkett said.

Burkett added that Rather is greatly exaggerating his record. First, Burkett says, Rather "misspoke” when he claimed he signed up for the Marines twice. He didn’t.

And Burkett is flabbergasted that Rather continues to proudly describe himself as a "Marine.”

"What he did, he signed up for the military twice, not the Marines,” Burkett said after thoroughly reviewing Rather’s military records.

But Burkett notes that Rather "never got through Marine recruit training because he couldn’t do the physical activity.”

Rather 'Unfit'

As Burkett explains in "Stolen Valor," Rather "was discharged less than four months later on May 11, 1954 for being medically unfit.” As a boy, Rather had suffered from rheumatic fever.

"This is like a guy who flunks out of Harvard running around saying he went to Harvard,” Burkett said.

Burkett also believes that, far from being a gung-ho military enlistee, Rather’s record shows he deftly avoiding entering the military during the Korean War.

Burkett says that Rather was a student at Sam Houston University at a time during the Korean War when "you could be drafted right out of college,” with deferments available only short term, for a semester.

"The way he got around being eligible for the draft was he joined a reserve unit – Army reserve but not the Marines.” Rather stayed in the reserve for the entire war.

"The second the Korean War was over, and he wasn’t in jeopardy anymore, he dropped out of the Army Reserve. He later graduated from college, and then went into the Marine Corps. So he signed up for the Marine Corps once,” Burkett said, not twice.

Rather knows he is skirting the truth about his record, Burkett believes. "He’s made such a big deal out of this ‘I’m a Marine’ thing. I mean, to a real Marine, you’re not a Marine – I mean even though you swore an oath and you’re technically on the payroll, you’re not a real Marine until you get out of basic training. And he never got out of recruit training.”

During Rather’s angry confrontation with Goldberg, the author of "Bias” says that "to his credit,” the anchorman emphasized that his Marine service was during "peacetime” so that "he was trying not to sound like some kind of war hero.”

Still, Rather never disclosed that his Marine service never got him past basic training.

Meanwhile, Burkett is miffed that Rather led media criticism of former Vice President Dan Quayle’s military record during his White House campaign.

"This is the same national broadcaster who, night after night during the 1988 presidential campaign, hammered Republican presidential candidate Dan Quayle for avoiding Vietnam by joining the National Guard,” he said.

"CBS was particularly heavy on Dan Quayle and his Guard experience. … It’s exactly the same thing Dan Rather did during the Korean War.

"If I had been in Rather’s position,” added Burkett, "I wouldn’t even have ever brought up the Marine Corps.”

Burkett has tracked Rather’s claims for years. In "Stolen Valor,” Burkett investigated a CBS TV documentary, "The Wall Within,” hosted by Rather.

The thrust of Rather’s report was that hordes of Vietnam veterans were dysfunctional, mentally disturbed or harbored guilt because their superiors had forced them to kill Vietnamese civilians.

Burkett did his own investigation and found that this was all hype. And while he was at it, he looked up Rather’s own military history. So determined was he that the story be put in perspective that Burkett ended up collaborating with ABC on a "counter documentary” on that network’s "20/20.”

This attempt to set the record straight won "20/20” a Cine Award, a significant honor within the industry.

"We attacked Rather’s documentary as being a bogus piece of work,” Burkett recalled to NewsMax.


Get Bernard Goldberg’s "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News" and B.G. Burkett & Glenna Whitley’s "Stolen Valor" at a discount from NewsMax

[LivinSoFree]

While he certainly bears some responsibility for screwing up on the story- the reality of it is that there was no lasting impact as a result. An EXTREMELY THOROUGH retraction was issued once fact checkers found it to be a hoax, and now everyone knows the facts. Dan Rather has been a FINE journalist for many years, and one I've come to thoroughly respect. I watched him during the hours and days following the September 11th attacks, and that man stayed at his post RELENTLESSLY, in excess of a couple days without a break, if I recall. His ability to convey the humanity of a situation and report the news in such a way as to put life into it is a rare thing. Personally, I think all this hate and discontent surrounding him is a gross overreaction and the result of playing politics- Republicans didn't have anything else to draw negative attention to, so they seized this as an opportunity and- you guessed it- through the media made a massive mountain over what is in reality a mistake that had zero net effect over the long term. Personally, I'm slightly amused at how this has been blown out of proportion as a "sign of the corrupt liberal media," when, in fact, it is the conservative side of the media which has given this all its bluster. Without Fox News and The Washington Times, this would have been dealt with respectfully, facts would have been corrected, an apology would have still been issued, and a fine journalist would still be at his post.

Maybe I'm the odd duck here, but I really don't care. It p*sses me off to no end to see a guy with a career like that railroaded because of that kind of a mistake that, had the political climate of the nation been any different, would have been dealt with in a much more reasonable fashion, but because we as a nation have gotten our collective panties in a wad over the "godless liberals suppressing the helpless moral majority," he suffered a much worse fate.

The above quoted source- "NewsMax" is just as bad as "Newsweek" in terms of bias, it just sits at the opposite end of the scale with blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge- THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE, IT'S THE SAME GAME ON TWO DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE SPECTRUM!

[arzach]

Maybe I'm the odd duck here, but I really don't care. It p*sses me off to no end to see a guy with a career like that railroaded because of that kind of a mistake that, had the political climate of the nation been any different, would have been dealt with in a much more reasonable fashion, but because we as a nation have gotten our collective panties in a wad over the "godless liberals suppressing the helpless moral majority," he suffered a much worse fate.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LSF, unwad your own panties and read Old Sarge's post...beginning to end. rather was and is a puke. He ended his 'career' the way he deserved, in shame, his biased reporting along with 'uncle wally' led to the prolonging of the VietNam War, our 'so-called defeat' and thousands of needless deaths in VietNam and cambodia...call it dominoes in reverse.

rather ain't spit

[Osotogary]

LivingSoFree,
Personally, Dan Rather always seemed squared away to me when I was watching him on the tube in my yesterday youth. (What did I know then? What do I know now? LOL) He always used to ask some very tough questions to some very influential people. That alone probably got a whole lot of people pizzed off at him. I wasn't aware of his "military" claims until ...maybe, at the most, two years ago. As long as he reports the facts as they are and not as they are fabricated I have no problem at all with his reporting. (This is a criteria that I use for all reporters on all sides of the spectrum). I think most viewers would be happy just to hear the essential truth reported from any unbiased reliable source. Of course that's the problem nowadays...Reliability and who or what is behind that reliability. Often times the scapecoat becomes the reporter justifiably or not. (That's where the "railroading" comes into play.) Perhaps, to some, Dan Rather was railroaded - after all he was retirement age. But right now the only reason that I copied and pasted the NewsMax article is because it had the potential to answer the question about Dan Rather's claims to being a Marine. I couldn't find any other articles that would validate Mr. Rather's claims that he was a Marine.
That's about it.

[Lock-n-Load]

It was revealing reading the above posts...98% anti-Rather [I agree] with the Ole Sarg and arzach posts...jeeez, I was in Korea getting my arse shot off and Dandy Dan Rather was eyeballs deep in pots and pans in some pansy Army Reserve [week-end warriors] in the Big PX, WoW, real rough duty...I have no sympathy what-so-ever for his nefarious methods of delivering the news to America for decades..he deserves to see his luster turning green with rust and fading fast into oblivion...I pray the silence to his bloated/pompous ego is deafening to his last breath...just another no good phony exposed...the weak SOB couldn't even make through MCRD, his DIs saw early and first hand, what he was made out of...Whale-Shlt!!!.....Semper Fi, Marines

[OLE SARG]

Lock-n-Load,
NNNiiiiiccccceeeee post - at least you, me and arzach weren't fooled by dan "psuedo-intellect" rather.

SEMPER FI,
OLE SARG

[thedrifter]

Another......



Newsweek: A Dan Rather rerun Brent Bozell
May 18, 2005

Just months after Dan Rather and CBS brought shame and disgrace to the entire American journalism profession with their phony National Guard expose of George W. Bush, Newsweek magazine has been exposed for declaring -- with nothing more than one anonymous source's gum-flapping -- that U.S. interrogators were flushing the Koran down the toilet to inflame detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

How many eerie parallels are there between the CBS scandal and the Newsweek scandal? Let us count the ways:

1. Both stories caused liberal media types to hunt for years to prove the urban legends dear to the hearts of the Bush-bashers. In the CBS case, reporters spent years pecking through George W. Bush's National Guard records, searching desperately for, and occasionally suggesting the existence of, smoking guns. They just knew he had somehow shirked his duties. In the Newsweek case, reporters had spent years chasing down the most shocking Guantanamo-interrogation stories they could find. Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer assembled a pile of poorly sourced Koran-in-the-john stories dating back to 1983, a regular urban legend of Islam coverage. The media just knew the U.S. military at Guantanamo were guilty of serious abuses.

2. Both stories relied on a single anonymous source. In CBS's case, he was "unimpeachable"; in Newsweek's, "reliable." In the case of CBS, that source was revealed to be Bill Burkett, a Texas-based Bush-hater with a lot more poison than evidence against Bush. In Newsweek's case, the magazine misled readers in their original story by saying "sources" claimed Koran-flushing would be in an official government report. Then, they claimed it was simply a "senior government official." Later, that "reliable" source couldn't vouch for the accuracy of his own statement.

3. Both outlets made comical claims about their professionalism in a time of crisis. Dan Rather claimed he would be the first to report the story of his own incompetence, and also claimed "Those who have criticized aspects of our story have never criticized the heart of it." Wrong. Newsweek called their reporting process "careful," and their laying out of the retracted story "transparent," which is a strange word to use when the unreliable source is still anonymous.

4. Both stories were incorrectly declared to be "confirmed" by outside sources. CBS claimed it had multiple typography "experts" who had authenticated the National Guard memos; it was subsequently revealed they could not get an expert to authenticate the memos before they aired it, and then the lone "expert" they cited as an authenticator said he had not done any such thing. Newsweek claimed it had presented its story to a couple of top Pentagon brass, and had received no denial; it was subsequently revealed that neither had done so because it is impossible to prove a negative.

5. In both cases, the story, left unchallenged, would prove highly damaging to the Bush administration. If Bush had truly defied National Guard superiors in a grave manner, it could have sunk his reelection campaign. If U.S. military interrogators were really stupid enough to think it's a neat idea to get information from Islamic radicals by flushing their sacred texts in the restroom, the White House would be confirmed as reckless zealots declaring war on every Islam-dominated nation. At this writing, the death toll caused by the Newsweek story stands at 17, with over 100 others injured in the ensuing riots. There is no telling how many more may die.

6. When both stories crumbled, the media outlets were initially reluctant to retract anything. Instead, they went about arrogantly maintaining it was up to their critics to prove them wrong, not their responsibility to get it right. For 12 days, Dan Rather stalled and stonewalled at CBS, declaring no one could prove his story false. Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker's first line with the New York Times was that "We're not retracting anything. We don't know for certain what we got wrong." Luckily for Newsweek, they saw the light on this faster than Rather did -- but only, as with CBS, after an outpouring of public outrage.

7. But even after the official retraction, the spin control continued. Dan Rather continued to insist, and other reporters followed suit, that while the documents may have been fabricated, the National Guard story was true. Newsweek's liberal media friends united around the theme that Newsweek will be proven right, that Koran-flushing was not "beyond the realm of possibility," as CNN's Anderson Cooper put it. On "Nightline," ABC's John Donvan intoned, "What really goes on at Guantanamo Bay, no one really knows."

It's just tragic that the liberal media are willing to believe the most exotic rumors about the depredations of President Bush and the U.S. military, long before they've been verified and long after they've been retracted.

Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a Townhall.com member group.

Ellie

[arzach]

Osotogary.........
My bad...I atributed your post to Old Sarge...musta been a short-round.

Now begs the question...what other media/hollywood icons have moldy, musty closets???

[Osotogary]

arzach,
I usually catch the ricochets. LOL
I still maintain that even if D. Rather is/was a complete jerk BUT his news was/is without a doubt, truly factual, I would listen to his broadcast. Since his news reporting, or should I say, what news he presented, has been challenged and found to be mis-leading, I can't say for sure wether I'd be prone to watch his newscasts now or in the future. It is simply a matter of reliability. News has got to be, wether pleasant or not, factual and reliable and presented as such.