I hope my readers aren’t expecting too much in the way of commentary on the “scandal” surrounding the CBS/Dan Rather/bogus memos/Bush’s Guard service story. This may be the political story-of-the-day, but the truth is, I don’t care.
Yes, I realize CBS screwed up in a huge way. Those involved with the story were careless, reckless, and unprofessional. Still, I don’t care.
The reasons for my lack of concern are three-fold.
First, the point of the story — that Bush never fulfilled his obligations to the National Guard — is still true. CBS relied on bogus documents and failed to apply standards used by journalists at the high-school level, but the hoopla surrounding their ridiculous mistakes doesn’t change the fact that our commander-in-chief, the one who smears war heroes when it’s politically convenient, did not fulfill his responsibilities to the National Guard and shirked his duties to the military in a time of war.
Second, as media screw-ups go, the 60 Minutes flap is hardly the most critical. Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, and Stephen Glass literally made up stories out of whole cloth for major publications, Bob Novak’s reporting has at times been literally felonious, and many others (cough, Judith Miller, cough) have been embarrassments to the news industry. Indeed, the media’s Whitewater coverage makes “Memogate” look like a typo. As Atrios put it:
[T]he worst Rather has been accused of by sensible people is letting partisanship cloud his judgment. Accepting that as true just for sake of argument, it’s still a far less egregious sin than most of the Whitewater-era horseshit which has never been acknowledged as horsesh*t by the liberal media, even though unlike the Rather incident, much of that horsesh*t was clearly deliberately manufactured by the producers and reporters. These events were recycled and echoed throughout the entire liberal media, with no one calling foul and no one calling for their heads. Without making any statement about what the appropriate consequences for “Rathergate” should be, it’s clear that the media attention by that liberal media and the actual consequences have been much greater than dozens of worse incidents involving clear deliberate deception by people in the media.
And, finally, I really don’t care about “Memogate” because one news program getting one story’s support materials wrong pales in comparison to a White House getting an entire war wrong at the same time.
Once it became obvious that the network had screwed up, CBS appointed outsiders to conduct a thorough internal investigation to review the network’s mistakes and recommend preventative measures for the future. Four people have been fired as a result and their national anchor is heading into retirement under a cloud of scandal.
Simultaneously, the Bush White House was getting every detail of the war in Iraq wrong. Once it became obvious that the president had screwed up, there was no internal investigation, external investigations were discouraged, no one has been fired, and responsible parties were promoted.
It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Daily Show exchanges, broadcast in September.
Stephen Colbert: There’s got to be some accountability. Dan Rather is the head — the commander-in-chief, if you will — of his news organization. He’s in the ultimate position of power who made a harmful decision based on questionable evidence. Then, to make things worse, he stubbornly refused to admit his mistake, choosing instead to “stay the course” and essentially occupy this story for too long. This man has got to go.
Jon Stewart: Um, we’re talking about Dan Rather.
Stephen Colbert: Yes, Jon, Dan Rather. CBS is in chaos, unsafe, driven by internal rivalries. If you ask me, respectable, reputable outsiders need to be brought in to help the rebuilding effort.
Jon Stewart: At CBS News.
Stephen Colbert: Yeah, at CBS News. What possible other, unrelated situation could my words be equally applicable to? Now, people need to be held accountable: the commander-in-chief, the vice president, the secretary of defense, the national security advisor…everyone at CBS News needs to go.
With this in mind, it’s just a little too difficult to get worked up over the “Memogate” story.