CBS May Have to Pay A Price

[Annie]

Some of the affiliates are hearing their customers:

http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerry200409152021.asp

AFFILIATED FRUSTRATION [09/15 08:21 PM]


Kerry makes his entrance at a town-hall meeting in Toledo, Ohio, September 14, 2004.
The reactions of affiliate stations of CBS's refusal to back down from their increasingly discredited Bush National Guard story range from patient to angry.

Ken Charles, the program director of KPRC radio in Houston, told the Kerry Spot Wednesday evening that he has notified CBS Radio news that he will be switching to Fox News feed for their Friday evening news, instead of using the Dan Rather-anchored CBS feed.

"Dan has been doing the Friday 4 P.M. slot for about three or four years, and this is the first time Dan Rather has been the story," Charles said. "I have a problem with my news people being the story."

Charles said that his station is under contract with CBS, and that the move is unlikely to have a financial impact for CBS. The public-relations damage, however, could be significant.

"We're the number-seven market in the nation, and I would hope it would send a message to them about how serious this is," Charles said. "I announced at 5:10, and since then (about an hour and a half) we've gotten 150 e-mails from listeners, all supportive.

Charles said he had communicated his concerns to a CBS News official, who had told the concerned program director to wait until the network's Wednesday announcement. That announcement was expected at noon, and was delayed until after 5 P.M. EST. When the terse statement released by CBS News President Andrew Heyward did not address any of the question about the story, Charles made his decision.

Several CBS television affiliates haven't returned phone calls to the Kerry Spot yet, but others have shared e-mails from viewers who are complaining about Rather's now widely discredited report. Some affiliates aren't much happier than the viewers.

One affiliate-station official wrote, "this issue raises more questions about CBS' newsgathering ability than it does answers about President Bush.... On a local level, everything we do must be factually correct, fair and balanced. Unfortunately, we can't control the network news. The report should never have seen the light of day given their inability to justify that it's factually correct."

Another official at a different affiliate station wrote to a concerned viewer that his station is covering the matter locally, and talking to its own experts. He called the CBS report, "not acceptable at all."

A third West Coast affiliate is telling viewers: "CBS News is responsible for all content aired during their news programs. Feel free to call CBS in New York at 212-975-3247 between the hours of 7a-8:30a & 11a-12:30p Pacific time Monday-Friday."

Derek McGinty, who hosts a show on Washington's local CBS television affiliate, said on his program Wednesday night that he contacted CBS network headquarters in an attempt to line up an interview with Dan Rather. Rather and the network agreed, but "time for that interview simply ran out," McGinty said.

 

[Comrade]

Hey Dan, you hear that smack? That's the door that just hit your ass!


Everyone thank Dan for his documents :read:!

 

[OCA]

Hey Dan, you hear that smack? That's the door that just hit your ass!


Everyone thank Dan for his documents :read:!

CBS is not going to cut Rather loose, mark my words. Just like they didn't cut him loose the time he threw a tantrum because the news was preempted by the U.S. Open tennis tournament and he threw a fit and stormed off the set and was missing for the first 8 minutes of the news broadcast.

 

[musicman]

CBS is not going to cut Rather loose, mark my words. Just like they didn't cut him loose the time he threw a tantrum because the news was preempted by the U.S. Open tennis tournament and he threw a fit and stormed off the set and was missing for the first 8 minutes of the news broadcast.

My brother feels the same way, OCA. God, I hope you guys are wrong. The only difference I can see from the "tennis tantrum" is that the LMM aren't the only game in town anymore. Cable, talk radio, and the net have been kicking their asses all around the block, and every ratings point is life-and-death to them now. I guess we'll see.

 

[krisy]

i don't think they will let him go,they are too pompas and proud for that. One has to wonder if they are learning their lesson yet,considering their ratings are tanking. probably not though,when you are one sided for that long,it doesn't go away in a few weeks. Can you imagine all his buds at the other stations throwing "on Air" tantrums if they fired him. they all still speak highly of him and won't admit he is bias.I gotta get the book "Arogance" by Bernard Goldberg. i have allready read "Bias",and it was great.

 

[OCA]

My brother feels the same way, OCA. God, I hope you guys are wrong. The only difference I can see from the "tennis tantrum" is that the LMM aren't the only game in town anymore. Cable, talk radio, and the net have been kicking their asses all around the block, and every ratings point is life-and-death to them now. I guess we'll see.

Don't get me wrong Rather is a complete goon but they will pin this on some underling you can bet your ass and Rather will escape scot-free.

I do hope they actually discover where the marching orders for this came from, I believe the DNC myself because I don't think Rather has the balls to pull this stunt on his own.

 

[musicman]

Don't get me wrong Rather is a complete goon but they will pin this on some underling you can bet your ass and Rather will escape scot-free.

I do hope they actually discover where the marching orders for this came from, I believe the DNC myself because I don't think Rather has the balls to pull this stunt on his own.

I almost hate to tell you what I think. In any other times but these, it would sound like lunatic, paranoid ravings. But, I remember reading a Dick Morris article a year and a half ago, where he said that, in order for Hillary to have a decent run at the White House in '08, Bush HAD to win this year. Now, it's not a week after the Clinton team joins the Kerry campaign, vowing that "the gloves are coming off", that THIS bullshit hits the airwaves.

If the Clintons wanted to deal a death blow to the Kerry campaign, this was sure as hell the way to do it. Rather - screw him. He's expendable. What did he expect from a worse bunch of reprobates than even himself - loyalty?

 

[KarlMarx]

In CBS's comfortable little TV world catering to liberals in their living rooms, a felony has been committed: falsifying government documents. Dan Rather, or someone who works for him, probably knows who committed the forgery. Anyone who impedes the investigation, even after the fact, also becomes an accessory, and could go to jail.

And by the way, even if you're a journalist, the right to forge documents isn't covered by the First Amendment.

There's more on the line than just Rather's job. As the excerpt from the article (link posted below) points out, falsifying government documents is a felony and if Rather knows who did it, he's an accessory to that crime.....

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/anderson200409160904.asp

 

[Adam's Apple]

I have to chuckle when I hear comments on this story from some of the other networks' pundits. Their conclusion seems to be that someone used CBS fraudulently to get a point across, that CBS was hoodwinked. In light of CBS’s past history of reporting "news", how could the conclusion not be drawn that the real story is probably just the reverse: that CBS had a point of view they wanted to get across and that they went looking for someone they could use to do that. That is probably the truer version of this story.