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assessment
Dan Rather
The anchor as madman.
By Bryan Curtis
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004, at 11:29 AM PT
Of all the gloriously absurd moments in the Memogate scandal, only one qualifies for Dan Rather's greatest hits. Asked last week if he would ever concede that the National Guard memos he showed on the Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes were forgeries, Rather replied, "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story." Never before had Rather so perfectly summed up his career as Journalistic Self-Parody: I'll get you the big story, Chief, even if it means interviewing myself.
On Monday, Rather conceded what the blogosphere had known for a week. The National Guard memos were too dubious to effectively dispute George W. Bush's service record. The next few days will determine whether Rather continues as anchor of the CBS Evening News or exits with a Peter Arnett-like thud.
Rather has already achieved a kind of perfection: He has been accused of liberal bias by every GOP administration since Richard Nixon's. After he pilloried Nixon during press briefings for months, the president growled, "Are you running for something?" Reaganites accused the Evening News of interviewing downtrodden workers to generate pathos and undermine President Reagan's policies. Rather's most famous showdown with a Republican came against George H.W. Bush, when he harangued the vice president about the Iran-Contra scandal. Bush responded with so much vitriolRather was left to sputter, "You made us hypocrites in the eyes of the world!"that the veep temporarily quelled the "wimp factor" and marched through the Republican primaries.
In reponse to these brouhahas and the National Guard story, conservative media critics have demanded blood. They charge that Rather's careless muckraking belies a liberal bias, but it's actually much worse than that. Rather isn't a liberal hack. He's bonkers.
What other reporter could get away with the spontaneous fits of rage and the homespun corniness that are his trademarks? Raised in Texas, Rather reads the news in a colloquial rat-a-tat: Paul Harvey as performed by Bill O'Reilly. He peppers his copy with aphorismse.g., "that dog won't hunt"and for a while ended the Evening News with a single, baffling word: "Courage."
Rather's taste for the absurd goes beyond mere oratorical style, according to Peter J. Boyer's excellent book Who Killed CBS? In 1981, Rather decided that he couldn't occupy Walter Cronkite's chair, so for his first Evening News broadcast he read the headlines while crouching behind the desk. When a rival TV journalist ambushed him outside of CBS headquartersa favorite tactic of the 60 Minutes gangRather instructed the reporter, "Get the microphone right up, will you?" Then he barked, "Fuck you." The clip played on television for days. Then there's Rather's odd penchant for costumes. He once trekked across the Afghan border on foot and returned with hours of dazzling reportingall of which he undermined by wearing a ludicrous peasant disguise on camera. TV critics lashed him with the nickname "Gunga Dan."
Rather's most embarrassing tantrum came during the 1987 U.S. Open tennis tournament. When producers told him a match would run long and truncate the Evening News, Rather disappeared and left the network with more than six minutes of dead air. (Such was Rather's cachet that no executive dared summon a replacement.) And don't forget the 1986 "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" attack, in which Rather was accosted by street toughs on Park Avenue in New York. You can hardly blame Rather for that one, but Boyer notes that such things rarely seem to happen to Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. It's as if Rather attracts half the madness in the universe, and the other half comes out of his mouth.
What makes him bluster? Some say Rather, who attended Sam Houston State College, tries to compensate for his brittle education with hard-charging brio. He often tells a story from his days as a young CBS correspondent, when he bought a Great Books series and plowed through all the volumes. Rather didn't wear his newfound erudition lightly. Once, during a tense moment at the network, he lectured his colleagues, "I only have one thing to say to all of you people. Syracuse, 413." Producers were baffled. Only later did they realize that Rather kept a copy of Sir Edward Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World on his deskSyracuse, 413 B.C., was in Chapter 2.
These days, network news survives in hermetically sealed cocoonsfree of commercial pressures and calls for financial viability. CBS News has more cocoons than any other network. There's Evening News, which languished in last place for years; Face the Nation, another ratings disaster; Sunday Morning, which remained unchanged even after the death of anchor Charles Kuralt; and 60 Minutes, which is profitable but has an employee-retirement program similar to that of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The CBS cocoons engender a kind of madness. Rather is paid an outsized salaryhe makes $7 million per yearthat is in no way commensurate with the number of viewers he delivers. Where most prime-time shows have a few weeks to prove their viability, newscasts often are given years and decades. The network's former glory allows Rather to shroud himself in the aura of Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. "I'm confident we worked longer, dug deeper, and worked harder than almost anybody in American journalism does," Rather told the Washington Post Sunday, when in fact CBS spent less time verifying the Guard documents than most bloggers.
Rather has labored in Walter Cronkite's shadow for more than 20 years, ever since the old man lumbered off into retirement. The problem isn't that Rather can't match Cronkite's gravitas (though he can't). The problem is that Rather can't duplicate Cronkite's magnificent ratings, which protected him from all sorts of unwanted intrusions. When Rather took over the anchor chairand ratings dippedCBS began to slash costs and push for Nielsen-boosting scoops.
"Old anchormen don't go away," Cronkite said on his final broadcast, "they keep coming back for more." When Rather quitswhether this week or at a moment of his own choosingit will mark an enormous shift in American cultural life. For the first time in a generation, viewers will flip on Evening News, grab a snifter of brandy, and prepare to receive the day's stories from someone who isn't barking mad.
Bryan Curtis is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at [email protected].
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2107006/
Kathianne said:I'm sure I'll be sorry to have used the title too soon, since it seems that everyone believes the story is over, when it's just begun. ~sigh~
http://slate.msn.com/id/2107006/
Merlin1047 said:Jeez Kathianne - first the French and now poor old Dan?
Woman, you have a mean streak.
I like it.
:teeth:
Bonnie said:God I hope this story is at full speed right up till the election. I just hope they can find poor elusive meniguez (sp) the one who "gave" the documents to Burkett who then made copies and burned the originals to avoid forensic evidence
CBS Producer on Thin Ice After Guard Story
Spotlight Hits Behind-The-Scenes CBS Producer for Her Role in National Guard Documents Flap
NEW YORK Sept. 21, 2004 The fallout from CBS's doomed story about President Bush's National Guard service most endangers a woman few viewers know but who played a key role in two of the biggest television stories of the year.
Mary Mapes, a veteran producer at CBS News, reported most of the National Guard story, including obtaining the documents CBS now says it can't authenticate. She also passed on the phone number of her source, former Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, to the Kerry campaign.
Mapes, 48, was described by colleagues on Tuesday as a dogged and talented journalist who made no secret of her liberal political beliefs.
She's only a few months removed from a career-defining highlight. Mapes took a story that had received little attention the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and unearthed the photos that gave the story its visceral impact.
"She pursued stories very aggressively always," said Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes." "She definitely has an investigative sense. She was responsible for the bulk of the work on Abu Ghraib. That was her story."
The Dallas-based producer, who declined through a spokeswoman to talk with The Associated Press, also landed the first TV interviews with Strom Thurmond's biracial daughter and Hillary Rodham Clinton after her husband's impeachment. Mapes was almost jailed in 1999 for refusing a judge's order to turn over a videotape of Dan Rather's interview with a white man convicted of killing a black man by driving him behind a pickup truck.
She worked at Seattle's KIRO-TV before coming to CBS in 1989. In the "60 Minutes" tradition, producers like Mapes wield tremendous influence on the stories and operate with a great deal of independence a status earned after many years of proving themselves, Fager said.
John Carlson, a former commentator at KIRO-TV who is host of a conservative radio talk show in Seattle, remembers Mapes as a talented producer with whom he often argued politics in the newsroom.
Mapes was "quite liberal" and disliked the current President Bush's father, he said.
"She definitely was someone who was motivated by what she cared about and definitely went into journalism to make a difference," Carlson said. "She's not the sort of person who went into journalism to report the news and offer an array of commentary."
Carlson spoke with Mapes about the National Guard story a week ago, and said that he believes she "put so much time into it that she wanted something to come of it."
"This was a woman with a good reputation," he said. "The mistakes she made were so obvious. This was a story that was rushed because they clearly believed it was true. They wanted it to be true."
Rather acknowledged Monday that Burkett didn't come to CBS. The network approached him about the documents, knowing he had been trying for several years to discredit President Bush's military service record, he said.
In a USA Today story, Burkett said he agreed to turn documents impugning Bush's service widely considered now to be fake over to CBS on the condition CBS would help arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign. Burkett's lawyer, Gabe Quintanilla, said he could not immediately confirm that Tuesday.
CBS acknowledged Mapes passed on Burkett's number to Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart, and Lockhart called him. Spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said CBS wasn't aware that this was part of any deal, but it's one of the things that will be examined by an independent commission CBS will soon appoint to look into the incident.
"It is obviously against CBS News standards and those of every other reputable news organization to be associated with any political agenda," Edwards said.
It had to be tempting: get key documents you've long been seeking to nail down a story, and all you had to do was set up a phone call.
Still, it's a lapse in journalistic ethics if true, said Marvin Kalb, senior fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
"Journalists do all kinds of odd things these days to get a news story," Kalb said, "but one of the things they should not be doing is paying the price of a political contact."
It's particularly damaging when news coverage is being scrutinized by both sides of a bitter political divide, said Frank Sesno, former CNN Washington bureau chief and professor at George Mason University. Even before this story, Rather and CBS News were targets of groups concerned about an anti-Republican bias in the media.
The Lockhart contact "is going to cast more doubt on not just the practices, but the motives behind the story," Sesno said.
"She's done many, many solid stories in her career," Fager said. "How this went so horribly wrong is a mystery to many of us and I like forward to hearing the details."
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.
CAMPAIGN 2004 BUSH'S MILITARY RECORD
CBS apologizes for Guard story
By Jeff Zeleny and John Cook
Tribune staff reporters
Published September 21, 2004
WASHINGTON -- CBS News, in a stunning concession, said Monday that it was "deliberately misled" about the authenticity of documents that questioned President Bush's service in the Air National Guard and apologized for airing a story raising new doubts about Bush's performance three decades ago.
After more than a week of vigorously defending a "60 Minutes" report built around what appeared to be memos from Bush's superior officers, the network conceded it was duped by Bill Burkett, a retired officer in the Texas Air National Guard and longtime critic of the president.
What remained a mystery, though, is the true origin of the memos that have inflamed an already divisive race.
The White House late Monday suggested a Democratic operative and CBS News had worked in coordination with Burkett to produce the documents. Joe Lockhart, a senior adviser to John Kerry's campaign, dismissed the accusation.
"We appreciate the fact that CBS deeply regrets it," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "but there are still serious questions that we believe need to be answered."
The story, anchored by Dan Rather on the network's premier news magazine program on Sept. 8, received considerable attention because the White House distributed copies of the memos that were presented by CBS. Even though the documents implied Bush received preferential treatment in the Air National Guard, administration officials said they had no reason to believe the documents were not real.
Six weeks before Election Day, the story of the disputed documents has fueled an already impassioned debate over how Bush and Kerry served their country during the Vietnam War. The admission by CBS News leaves unresolved questions about how Bush gained entry into the Guard and what he did in 1972 after transferring from his Texas unit to work on an Senate race in Alabama.
"The failure of CBS News to properly, fully scrutinize the documents and their source led to our airing the documents. We should not have done so. It was a mistake," Rather told viewers on his Monday evening broadcast. "CBS News deeply regrets it. Also, I want to say personally and directly, I'm sorry."
`Mistake in judgment'
After 10 days of extraordinary scrutiny, CBS acknowledged it made a "mistake in judgment" by airing the story based on four documents alleging Bush had attempted to skirt his duties 32 years ago in the Texas Air National Guard. Document experts said the memos looked as though they were crafted on a computer instead of a 1970s government-issue typewriter.
The documents appeared to be signed by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron leader, who died in 1984. The Chicago Tribune and other news organizations used the documents released by the White House in stories published Sept. 9.
"We wanted the public to have them. We want the media to have them," McClellan said, explaining why the White House passed along the memos. "Since that time, we have seen a number of serious questions raised by experts and by media organizations, and now finally CBS is acknowledging that the crux of their story was based on information that was likely forged and came from a discredited source."
Later Monday, the White House intensified its criticism, saying that Lockhart, a Kerry adviser and former press secretary under President Bill Clinton, had talked by telephone to Burkett before the report aired on CBS. Lockhart confirmed he had talked to Burkett, after being referred to him by a CBS producer working on the story, but said he did not discuss the allegations in the memos.
"The fact that CBS News and a top-level adviser to the Kerry campaign coordinated on attacking the president is a stunning and deeply troubling revelation that raises serious questions," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said. "It is time for the Kerry campaign to come clean with its involvement in this growing scandal, and for Sen. Kerry to immediately hold responsible anyone on his campaign who was involved."
In an interview, Lockhart replied, "There is no involvement in the documents at all."
Within hours of the Sept. 8 broadcast, questions about the authenticity of the memos began circulating in conservative Internet chat rooms. Then, document experts cast doubts on the memos. Last week, Killian's former secretary said she believed the memos were bogus but said the contents reflected the thinking of Bush's commanders at the time.
`High degree of confidence'
"We had a high degree of confidence in the report and in the reporting that went into it," said CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "Obviously, based on what we have learned since, there were flaws in the process that we now have to identify. In retrospect, we should not have aired the documents and we have expressed regret for that."
Heyward said he has ordered an external review.
The retraction is an extraordinary about-face for CBS News, which had ferociously defended the documents and their authenticity. Two days after the report aired, Rather attributed attacks to "partisan political operatives" and stuck by his story.
In an interview Monday evening, a repentant Rather conceded it had been a mistake to broadcast the documents. But even though he could not vouch for their authenticity, he said he still did not believe that they were fakes.
"Do I think they're forged? No," Rather said. "But it's not good enough to use the documents on the air if we can't vouch for them, and we can't vouch for them."
Rather said he had no regrets for his defense of the story.
"I believed in it," he said. "I wouldn't have put it on the air if I hadn't of believed in it. And what kind of reporter would I be if I put something on the air in which I believed, and as soon as it's attacked and under pressure, you run, you fold, you fade, you side-wind? That's not the kind of person I am, and it's not the kind of reporter I am."
The situation changed last Thursday, Rather said, when Burkett acknowledged during a conference call with Rather and CBS executives that he had lied about how he came to possess the documents.
Before the story aired, Rather said he had interviewed Burkett about the documents and how he obtained them. Rather said his reporting on Burkett's background was one of the reasons for confidence in the story.
"When we talked to people in his home community in Texas," Rather said, "even those people that didn't like him said he's a truth-teller."
National correspondent Jeff Zeleny reported from Washington and staff reporter John Cook reported from Chicago.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
...The question now for CBS is whether an outside investigation will help the network repair its tattered reputation after its story charging that President Bush received favorable treatment in the National Guard -- and whether any high-level heads will roll.
CBS "clearly will benefit from such an independent review," said Johnson, who has retired from CNN. But he said the network had waited too long after the Sept. 8 story: "By prolonging it and trying to investigate themselves, it created unnecessary criticism of CBS."
The outside investigation has become a ritual of the media business after a big, full-blown, embarrassing blunder. CBS had resisted such a move for nearly two weeks until Dan Rather apologized Monday for reporting the "60 Minutes" segment on Bush based on documents the network now admits it cannot authenticate.
CBS News President Andrew Heyward said Monday that he hopes the panel, which he has not yet named, will report in "weeks, not months" and that he is "open to any recommendations. . . . When mistakes are made, the healthy thing for news organizations to do is to analyze why."
The most vulnerable employee at CBS would seem to be Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, who not only obtained the discredited documents but also put her source, former National Guardsman Bill Burkett, in touch with Joe Lockhart, senior adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign. But it remains unclear whether senior executives from Heyward on down, who approved the story, could also be in jeopardy, and how the network will deal with some critics' calls to oust Rather, whose contract has two more years to run.
Bob Zelnick, a former ABC correspondent who now chairs Boston University's journalism department, faulted CBS's apology, saying: "There's one word I haven't heard so far: retraction. They've yielded inch by inch on the authenticity of the documents and the reliability of the source, but without the documents there was no story." Until CBS retracts the story and apologizes directly to Bush, "it mitigates the potential beneficial effect of an independent board."
The risk in seeking an aggressive outside probe -- the only kind likely to have public credibility -- is that the findings can sting. USA Today, after a weeklong silence, named an outside panel to investigate what turned out to be a series of fabricated stories by star correspondent Jack Kelley. The panel, headed by founding editor John Seigenthaler, said that the paper ignored numerous warnings and that a "virus of fear" deterred many staffers from reporting problems with Kelley's work. Editor Karen Jurgensen resigned, as did her managing editor, and the executive editor was reassigned.
USA Today is facing new questions after acknowledging yesterday that its reporters had also obtained the disputed Guard memos from Burkett, right after the "60 Minutes" broadcast. The paper said that Burkett has now admitted he lied to USA Today, as well as CBS, about where he got the documents and that it is identifying him because he agreed to an on-the-record interview.
Executive Editor John Hillkirk said USA Today would not have published the documents without the "60 Minutes" story, at least not without further checking. "It's unfortunate Burkett chose to lie about the source of the documents," he said. As soon as questions were raised by other news organizations, Hillkirk said, "we jumped into that aggressively. . . . We never did vouch for the documents' authenticity."
The paper's Sept. 9 story said that Bush's Guard commander felt pressure to "sugar coat" his evaluation, according to "newly disclosed documents" that were "obtained by USA Today" and "also reported" by "60 Minutes."
After New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was exposed as a serial fabricator last year, executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd were forced out amid heavy staff criticism, and a panel composed mainly of Times employees -- plus three outsiders -- was named to scrutinize the debacle. The new editor, Bill Keller, adopted the panel's recommendations while decrying "a climate of isolation, intimidation, favoritism and unrelenting pressure." He appointed the first ombudsman in the paper's history and a standards editor, and ordered limits on the use of anonymous sources.
Structural changes often follow such reviews. When CNN's Johnson went through the "very painful" process of retracting the "Operation Tailwind" story, which charged that U.S. troops used nerve gas during the Vietnam War, he said he named an executive vice president for standards and practices and tightened the vetting process for investigative stories.
CBS News also created the job of vice president for news practices -- in 1982, when an internal probe found violations of its standards over a Vietnam documentary that led to a lawsuit by retired Gen. William Westmoreland, which was settled without payment.
In the "Dateline" fiasco, NBC not only abandoned a brief defense of its story involving a rigged crash test but also settled a lawsuit by General Motors, the manufacturer of the vehicle in question. Shapiro said the network created a department of standards and practices and added new layers of executives so that "different sets of eyeballs" are scrutinizing every story.
"There's always a fear of groupthink," Shapiro said. "People get a story and they love it so much they may have blinders on."
Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program.
Kathianne said:"She definitely was someone who was motivated by what she cared about and definitely went into journalism to make a difference," Carlson said. "She's not the sort of person who went into journalism to report the news and offer an array of commentary."
