The idea of a mainstream, adversarial press took another step backwards yesterday. This time, it was CBS.
As Atrios and Sarah Posner noted, the network has reached out to the White House, promising to be nicer to Bush from now on.
Let the fence-mending begin. According to a Broadcasting & Cable source in Washington, D.C., CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, recently met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.
CBS News’ popularity at the White House — never high to begin with — plunged further in the wake of Dan Rather’s discredited 60 Minutes story on George Bush’s National Guard service.
An incentive for making nice is the impending report from the two-member panel investigating CBS’s use of now-infamous documents for the 60 Minutes piece.
Heyward was “working overtime to convince Bartlett that neither CBS News nor Rather had a vendetta against the White House,” our source says, “and from here on out would do everything it could to be fair and balanced.” CBS declined to comment.
I obviously wasn’t privy to the conversation, but this sounds pretty ridiculous.
CBS may have forgotten, but relations between an adversarial press corps and a White House are supposed to be “chilly.” The two institutions are competitors.
If the Bush gang is angry at CBS, the network should view this as a good sign, not a problem to be rectified.