Posted on 09/24/2004 3:53:48 PM PDT by Libloather
One Small Voice: Dan Rather's two-faced journalism
Jimmy Yeh
September 24, 2004
Amongst the storied figures that have shaped the media today, Dan Rather stands out as a pioneer in television news reporting. He has always fielded the tough questions that other reporters were scared to ask.
When charges of sexual harassment cropped up as then-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for governor of California, Rather asked pointed questions like, “If your wife came to you and said that some man had groped and grabbed her, and she used words like ‘disgusted,’ ‘afraid,’ ‘humiliated’ to describe how she felt, as a husband, as a man, what would you do?”
Meanwhile, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Dan took a more conservative approach: “Mr. President, you know Americans like to know that the first family is OK, that they’re doing all right. Given the year, plus what you and our first family have been through, tell us what you can about how the three of you are doing,” he asked in a 1999 interview. In none of Rather’s interviews did he ask Clinton about his infidelity. Indeed, Rather loves Clinton so much that in a 1993 CBS affiliate meeting he said he wished he could “be one one-hundredth as great as [Bill] and Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Dan Rather’s two-faced approach to journalism has been scrutinized before. News veteran Bernard Goldberg, a close colleague and former friend of Rather’s, wrote the bestselling book Bias, which documents Goldberg’s exile from the CBS news organization — not for doing anything illegal, but something far worse: by writing an op-ed piece about liberal bias in The Wall Street Journal.
Goldberg called Rather to warn him of his pending piece in WSJ. While Rather was at first very receptive, assuring Goldberg, “Bernie, we were friends yesterday, we’re friends today, and we’ll be friends tomorrow. So tell me about it.” Rather has not spoken to Goldberg once since then.
Rather’s actions are proof of a deliberate liberal media bias. Anyone who wants to refute this statement of fact knows nothing about politics. Media can be biased to the left wing or right wing, but it is rarely ever neutral.
But what is bias? It’s the little things — what stories to cover, what questions to ask, the use of loaded words and other such journalistic tricks.
Tim Groseclose of Stanford University and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago devised a method to measure liberal bias. They used think tanks as a barometer. Think tanks were labeled conservative or liberal by the amount of times liberals or conservatives in the U.S. Congress cited them. They then tracked how many times media outlets used statistics by these think tanks.
What they found was unsurprising. “Our results show a very significant liberal bias,” they said. The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, CBS and NBC “were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives.”
Thus, it is fitting that Rather finally be caught. In the Sept. 8 edition of “60 Minutes,” Rather uncovered new evidence that Bush received preferential treatment as an airman for the Texas Air National Guard, because that’s the hardworking nonpartisan journalist he is.
However, the superscript “th” appears in the documents. It is highly unlikely that a typewriter circa 1972 would have such capacity.
“The probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft’s Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero,” said Joseph Newcomer, one of the creators of computer type setting.
Let us assume for the moment that Dan Rather has produced authentic evidence that George W. Bush did receive preferential treatment. Why then is he still unwilling to name the title of his source?
We don’t necessarily need the name of the individual, but rather the motives behind the person coming forth with the information. Is he afraid that he will name someone in the Kerry campaign?
Who knows? Maybe the documents were genuine. All I know is that the Dan is finally getting some of his own medicine.
—Jimmy Yeh is a College freshman from Atlanta.
"I'm sure it will be discussed at the affiliates board meeting'' on Oct. 5, Sehring said. "If it's like the Janet Jackson episode, we will let them know that they have put us in a very difficult position.''
The FCC should step in ASAP...
So Ratner wishes he could be one one-hundreth as great as Bill and Hillary Clinton. Well RAT I have news for you. You already are, which makes you a very very very small man. You are done, now go away.
What we need to do is go after and boycott and sponsers of See-BS.
He seems well informed about Rather considering he's just a freshman.
So, what is the author saying, the sun rises in the east. Tell us, the choir, something we do not KNOW??
Nice writing Jimmy!
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Time to bump...
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