Posted on 09/30/2004 8:54:28 PM PDT by mrustow
Dan Rather's motives in foisting the Memogate hoax on the American people were: Ratings, revenge, and power.
Ratings. Any journalist worth his salt wants to reach everyone, and blow away the competition. Anyone who says otherwise, is either lying or in the wrong business. The best way for a journalist to reach the largest possible audience is with scoops on scandals. It's good journalism, and it's popular journalism. One of the reasons why the pc journalism of the socialist mainstream media (SMSM) and even the older, Republican mainstream media (RMSM; think, National Review) have been losing audience share in recent years, is because editors kill or ignore scoops that expose corruption among protected minorities and women. (In an interview last year with Bernard Chapin, NR staffer John Derbyshire said that the younger, affluent Republicans the magazine had attracted, in its attempt to revitalize its subscriber base, will not tolerate articles that criticize blacks and Hispanics.)
There is an abundance of scoops involving protected groups that are easy pickins, for anyone willing to do the work. In addition to the moral outrage of the corruption itself, I write so much on corrupt, protected groups, and the corrupt policies on police departments, and in newsrooms, schools and universities protecting them, because the stories are there for the telling, and MSM reporters won't tell them. Often, cowardly, lazy, reporters from the RMSM refuse to tell them, as well, or don't even know about them. Double-standards and protection from scrutiny guarantee corruption, which among human beings requires little encouragement, to begin with.
The SMSM have sought to compensate for their indifference and even hostility towards so much news, by generating audience share through fabricating "scoops" that are either hoaxes or wild exaggerations. The most common genre of such phony "scoops" is the race hoax. The most notorious media-generated race hoaxes have been the phony claims of reporters, columnists, and racist black organizations and leaders that white police engage in the "racial profiling" of innocent black males, which began in 1999, and the myth of the 2000 disenfranchisement of black Florida voters, which began the day after George W. Bush won the election. The classic example of creating a scoop via exaggeration would be the Abu Ghraib prison "scandal," which was created by none other than CBS News' Mary Mapes, the same producer who gave us Memogate/Rathergate. In the Abu Ghraib story, journalists demanded that the public see a little sexual degradation of prisoners as "torture." In any previous American war, even Vietnam, no self-respecting producer would have seen a story in Abu Ghraib. That Mapes will probably win every award in the book for it, is an unwitting statement on the moral collapse -- or should I say, "transformation"? -- of the journalism profession.
For years, CBS News had been in a distant third place, behind NBC and ABC. In New York, the CBS affiliate, WCBS News at 11 p.m., has long been beaten by Seinfeld reruns! And then, with the coverage of the Republican National Convention, Fox beat all of the Big Three in the ratings, but it whipped CBS worst of all. Rather was livid about that beating.
Revenge. The Fox media empire, known as News Corp, is of course the creation of Australian-born mogul Rupert Murdoch. Fox News started broadcasting on October 7, 1996, and was founded and is still run by Ohio-born Republican Roger Ailes, who was media guru to presidents Nixon and Reagan. In 1988, while working for Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, Ailes laid a trap for Rather. Ailes and Bush offered Rather an exclusive interview, but it had to be live. As I wrote on July 31, 2001:
And then there was the Black Eye at Black Rock of the Bush interview. In 1988, media guru Roger Ailes suckered Rather into conducting a live interview with Vice President George Bush, then the Republican presidential candidate. Journalists don't like to conduct live interviews, because they then lose the power of the final cut. Being able to cut a story means being able to shape it. Instead, Ailes and Bush did the shaping, with Bush, in a politician's fantasy come true, going on the offensive, attacking Rather.
If you don't think Rather hasn't sought ever since to avenge himself against Ailes and the Bushes, then you haven't left Kansas. As the Web site RatherBiased.com has shown, Rather has long been openly hostile towards George Bush the Elder, going back to before the 1988 interview. But that doesn't mean Rather would knowingly participate in a hoax, just to harm the President. It does mean, however, that in his desire for some Texas justice, media-style, he let down his guard and his standards. My experience is that most people can be pretty vindictive (and yes, that applies to yours truly in spades), but powerful people are much more vindictive than the rest of us, and are able to exercise their vindictiveness.
Power. Rather also wanted the power of having broken a story that decided the election. Again, although he is a socialist, that doesn't mean that he saw himself as John Kerry's personal "plumber" squad (though his 60 Minutes producer, Mary Mapes, may be another story). Recall that we are in the midst of a presidential campaign. Any reporter who succeeds at unearthing a terrible scandal, in which one of the major candidates is implicated, might just tip the election in the other candidate's favor, and guarantee the reporter's place in journalism's pantheon ... as long as the scandal implicates Pres. Bush!
Now, I'm going to say something that seems contradictory. I believe that Rather sought to cost Pres. Bush the election, but not in the sense of consciously seeing himself as a Democrat operative. Rather, he was -- along with virtually all of his colleagues at CBS, ABC, and NBC -- engaging in self-deception. The alleged journalists of the SMSM don't see themselves as helping John Kerry win the election because they are socialists in journalistic drag, but because they believe that this is simply what any decent person in the same position would do. That is how hermetically sealed their corrupt subculture is.
For an example of how that subculture operates, a few years ago, ABC News reporter Bob Zelnick started working on a book on then-Vice President Al Gore. Since Zelnick was not a socialist, and thus could not be relied on to write a book with the "correct" omissions, evasions, and conclusions, his bosses at ABC News ordered him to cease and desist from writing the book. When he persisted, they fired him.
That's called "zero tolerance." Such repression would never have occurred, had Zelnick been working on a book on a powerful Republican, and had anyone at ABC News sought to muzzle such a book, the entire industry would have risen, outraged, in Zelnick's support. Instead, there was silence.
The young Dan Rather would not have done the Memogate story. Memogate story is a product of a time in which the media routinely publish as "news," insane accusations and rumors without a shred of evidence, and specifically of an election season in which fraudulent "October surprises" have popped up on a monthly, and sometimes weekly basis. Over the past several years, journalistic fraud has been continually defined down, and Rather was just going with the flow.
Too bad there isn't psychiatric help for what the LW MSM suffers from.
I don't think there's psychiatric help for much of what anyone suffers from, but there is a form of therapy for the MSM's malady. It's called getting your brains beat in on a daily basis by people who are able to report the truth, whom the MSM is unable to silence.
BTTT
If CBS, dnc and Danny wern't in cahoots on the forgeries, why did they stall for 2 weeks so the DNC could cover its ass? They knew 2 weeks of denial would be CBSacide.
One word, hatred. ~~~ Hatred is like acid, it eats through its own container. Dan got burned by his own acid.
Joe Lockhart said he talked to Burkett to respond to Swift Boats Vets.
This JFKerry/CBS show was nothing more than to divert attention from the Swift Boats Vet.
How did the DNC cover its butt? If a federal prosecutor deals with the matter properly, all of the players will be subpoenaed in a felony forgery investigation.
One word, hatred. ~~~ Hatred is like acid, it eats through its own container. Dan got burned by his own acid.
Your explanation is both plausible and eloquent.
This JFKerry/CBS show was nothing more than to divert attention from the Swift Boats Vet.
You're falling for Lockhart's cover story. The Swifties were ancient history by then. Mary Mapes must be crossexamined under ioath on a court of law. She is the common denominator, and the political/journalistic "double agent," just as Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal once was for Bill Clinton, only more brighter and more ambitious.
Two weeks equal--- paper shredders, broken hard drives, destroyed telephone records etc.
"You're falling for Lockhart's cover story. The Swifties were ancient history by then. Mary Mapes must be crossexamined under ioath on a court of law. She is the common denominator, and the political/journalistic "double agent," just as Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal once was for Bill Clinton, only more brighter and more ambitious."
Falling for no, I believe that in the event that Burkett taped their conversation that in fact "responding" to the Swift Boats Vets would be in the conversation.
JFKerry is the leader of this hoax.
Not so, the Swift Boats Vets were getting ready to release their ad regarding JFKerry cavorting with the enemy in Paris.
JFKerry was hit by what these vets had to say about his lies over his service, but they had not yet gotten to the part of him actually going to Paris during the Peace talks.
The JFKerry/CBS had to do something and something fast, Mapes was the worker bee, and she was following the plan.
Ah. That's more interesting.
Who is he, pray tell?
Kerry wouldn't be the leader; that's not the sort of thing candidates do themselves. However, bringing Paris into the explanation works, as does the rest of your speculations.
Joe Lockhart. I captured it while Carl Cameron was interviewing him. Not once did Carl ask him what his role was in memogate.
That's odd. You'd think that would be the #1 question Cameron would want to ask.
BTTT
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