I hope Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS is heard in full. I’m sure his former employers will try to drag it out and try to outlive him but if he manages to present the facts of his case it could be one of the most significant services he does in his career as a reporter, pulling back the Lyin’ Curtain to expose the “corporatized, trivialized and castrated” charade that fits in the place that used to be filled by journalism. The description is from this piece by Mary Mapes, who was the first person thrown overboard by CBS when it became clear they wouldn’t stand up for the reporting done on George W. Bush’s draft dodging with the help of his daddy’s friends in Texas. If you remember that as having been a rebutted charge, you can be forgiven. That’s the way that the American “news” media played it in full disregard for the known facts and in light of the almost certainly suppressed and destroyed records.
You should really read Mapes post. Her account of, Dick Thornburgh’s grilling her over her talking like a reporter is rather funny, if it wasn’t so revealingly chilling. If you don’t recall it was the total Republican tool, Thornburgh, who was the “impartial investegator” chosen to head the CBS to look at where the story went wrong. Though it’s clear that the only thing Rather and his team did wrong was report the evidence that the worst president in the history of the country who was engaged in the most incompetent military and domestic policy in our history was a man who dodged the draft through the advantages of the sons of the oligarchy.
I really do hope that Rather’s suit is heard and, frankly, I hope he wins everything he’s asking for. I’ll bet that if it does go to trial some soppy lines about it damaging journalism will be spoken. What journalism? We might have had something like journalism once, with the entirely incompetent corporate shill Katie Couric as the replacement for Rather, it’s clear there is no journalism allowed on corporate TV.