Posted on 03/06/2005 8:15:41 AM PST by Jacksonville Patriot
Wrong from the Beginning From the March 14, 2005 issue: Even in 1963, Dan Rather was a poor excuse for a newsman. by Philip Chalk 03/14/2005, Volume 010, Issue 24 WHEN CBS ANNOUNCED THAT IT will smile through the pain of Dan Rather's dying credibility with an hour-long retirement tribute in early March, the network released an image of a young Rather posing in front of the Texas School Book Depository, looking gravely into the distance. While a little nostalgia was understandable--what, no photo of Rather huddled over a fax machine last October?--CBS still managed to remind those who knew the anchor during his salad days in Texas how tendentious and unprincipled he was even then.
Eddie Barker, for one, remembers. The news director for CBS's radio and TV affiliates in Dallas at the time of President Kennedy's November 22, 1963, assassination, Barker is widely credited with first reporting on the air that the president was dead, having received word through a doctor acquaintance directly from the hospital ER. Rather, then based in Dallas as a reporter for CBS's national news broadcast and working out of Barker's newsroom, later took credit for the scoop, Barker says. The error is repeated in historical accounts often enough to annoy the now-retired Barker, though he says the falsehood was later acknowledged by Rather.
It was a different lie--one delivered on national news, and at the expense of children--that caused Rather trouble at the time. As reporters from around the world descended on the Texas city, Rather went on the air with a local Methodist minister who made a stunning claim: Children at Dallas's University Park Elementary School had cheered when told of the president's death.
The tale was perfect for the moment, reinforcing the notion among distant media elites that Dallas was a reactionary "City of Hate." It slyly played to a local audience, too: The school named was in upper-income University Park, one of two adjacent municipal enclaves that shared a school district and a reputation for fiercely protected, lily-white privilege. Finally, for the ambitious Rather--a native Texan and then a Dallas resident--the account represented the very sort of revealing, local dirt that the throngs of out-of-town competitors would have to work far harder to get.
Except that it wasn't true, and Rather knew it, Barker says.
Approached earlier by the same minister with what was a second-hand account, Barker himself had run the story by the school's principal and some teachers, all of whom denied it outright. Because of the shooting, which took place at 12:30 p.m., the principal had decided to close the school early, though without telling the students why. The children at the school--including three of Barker's own--were merely happy to be going home early, he was told. There couldn't have been any spontaneous cheering at the news of Kennedy's murder, because no such news had been announced.
Undaunted, the dogged minister--"a very, very strong liberal and a very, very strong Kennedy supporter," Barker says--moved on to Rather.
"Rather came to me, and I said, 'My kids are in school there, and I checked it out, and there's not a darn thing to it,'" says Barker. "He said, 'Well, great--I'll just forget it.' But instead of forgetting it, he went out and did this gut job on Dallas and its conservatism," with the preacher's story at the center of his report.
With the discredited account likely to be challenged by the local affiliate's editors before being fed to New York, Rather sidestepped a customary film-editing session with Barker and arranged to file the report live instead, Barker says. "And so here's Dan with the preacher, telling this story about kids at UP cheering when told the president was dead."
Livid at being lied to, Barker laid into Rather as soon as he returned to the newsroom, expelling the reporter and all his national-news colleagues from the building on the spot. "I said 'Get the hell out of here--you and this whole damn bunch!'" he says.
Barker's local TV and radio crews scrambled to arrange on-air interviews with teachers to rebut the story, but the lie had already traveled halfway around the world and would become an enduring part of JFK assassination lore. In the meantime, CBS was threatening to pull its affiliation with the two local stations for having given Rather and his colleagues the boot.
"The next day I let him back in," Barker says. "But I wanted to make darn sure that he knew he couldn't pull that kind of crap with me."
While well-known in broadcast-news circles, the incident did nothing to slow Rather's rise; his Kennedy coverage was decisive in his eventual move up to CBS's New York headquarters. "You have to give him credit," says Barker. "He's a very aggressive guy."
Aggressive to a fault, as the ignominious end of his four-plus decades at CBS makes plain. As Barker himself--a CBS newsman for most of his career--says, "Anybody who followed CBS's coverage last year knows that they were doing a gut job on the president."
Philip Chalk, member of the University Park Elementary class of 1974, is production director at The Weekly Standard.
However, if Ruby whacking Oswald wasn't proof of a mob connection, there isn't any such thing as proof.
Go figure.
To prevent duplication, do not alter the heading or invent a new one. Thanks.
Well the FCC "allowed" cBS to investigate themselves..
To.... you know, DO THEIR JOB... An investigation of the FCC would better serve the america I believe.. Must be a real snake pit down at the FCC... Having Colins Powells son as the head of the FCC might have something to do with their inaction.. That internal investigation by cBS was damage control not an investigation at all..
"THE" investigation has NOT happened yet, and probably WON'T.. unless Ann Coulter is appointed the head of the FCC... or maybe G. Gordon Liddy... The democrats get away with murder... Po' ol' Vinnie Foster is rolling in his grave... As democrats LAUGH at spineless posturing republicans.
Amazing. What helped make Rather become famous, was this lie. This lie is so similiar to the AP's gay maggot lie last year re GW fans cheering when GW announced the Clintoon had gone to a hospital.
The difference this time was Free Republic and the conservative bloggers who identified the gay maggot writer, Hays, and documented that lie. No one cheered and clapped when GW made the announcement.
A few months, Buckhead, Howlin and others document another lie by Rather, the famous forged TANG documents. Rather instead of leading an electronic coup to replace GW, gets canned as a result of that lie.
So he became famous due to a lie and infamous due to another lie.
Great point, Grampa.He should have been fired from CBS, but instead, he is allowed
to retire from the EveningNewsLies and allowed to stay on 60
Minutes II, where he told his lying story about Bush.
Blather has over 30 years of his lies and deceit to blackmail the Viacom board to stay on.
It didn't happen in my school.
I was in Sixth grade when it happened, in Wylie, Texas which is about 30 miles north-east of Dallas. Shortly after the news "The President has been shot and wounded in Dallas" came over the PA system, they sent my class to the library, where we waited for news updates. When the news came that Kennedy had been officially pronounced dead, there wasn't a dry eye anywhere to be seen.
Viacom ought to come down too!!
But that is a job for later, ...we just need to build a history!
That must make it true/sarcasm
I can't say that no one cheered anywhere, being zygotic at the time, but, if this story is true, then Rather spread an inflammatory story without checking the facts.
Okay, who has a link to that "Index-finger to Ring-finger ratio" thread from yesterday? And we need a photo of Blather's hand to check it out...
Now that he's being forced into retirement, I'm just tickled pink.
They had his description from the people who watched him shoot the President. The photographer who took the picture of Ruby shooting Oswald almost had a picture of Oswald shooting at the sixth floor window but he was out of film.
Ping me if you know of a "media bias" ping list keeper here.
In 1963, Rather was bureau chief for the CBS affiliate in Dallas. He was in charge of setting up CBS's coverage of JFK's visit to Dallas. He claims he was on the west side of the triple underpass at the time of the assassination, waiting to pick up a reel of film shot during the motorcade, but photographic evidence suggests that he was not there. Rather was the first man to approach Abraham Zapruder following the assassination to acquire his film of the shooting. According to WC Counsel David W. Belin, "[Rather] took the film and was able to have the processing of the film expedited." Rather viewed the film and later misrepresented it to the American public, saying that JFK's head snaps forward instead of backward from the impact of the fatal shot. He was the first to report the name and background of the accused assassin.From that point on, Rather's rise to the top was rapid.
What's the font, Kenneth?
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