CBS Eats Crow, Rather Apologizes
Dean
They finally did the right thing.
Well, sort of. They're still not, apparently, admitting that many, many credible sources told them things they chose to ignore which cast doubt on other parts of the story that they aired. Therefore, it appears to this reporter that CBS News is still trying to weasel out from under this one, to merely state that the memos were questionable but not their contents. This despite the avalanche of evidence to the contrary. Rather plans a major apology on the CBS Evening News tonight. We'll see how far he goes, but it looks to me like he's still not going to fully do the right thing.
I mean, seriously, get this from Rather: "It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."
Really Mr. Rather? So where's the interview with Killian's family members? Where's the interview with the General he and Bush served under? Where's the interview with Killian's friends who said he loved Bush?
Not good enough, CBS News. You still aren't coming clean.
I wont hold my breath though.
Here's to hoping he holds his own breath.
You of all people know -- and have correctly lectured everybody among the thousands who log onto your world -- that these fading technologies and the Byzantine media empires that dominated network television for 50 years are approaching extinction.
With all of us so busy logging onto news online, then going into blogsites to discuss this news at length among the thousands, that few of us have any time to even switch on a television set. Moreover, those of us who do turn on the big broadcast box usually reserve this to some latenight laughs with Leno, the fading redhead, or any of a crop of entertaining latenighters. Or we watch some sports spectacle on weekends.
Let's face it. Network television is a museum piece of yesterday's technology, yesterday's mindset, yesterday's readers of rip&read news that, in any case, was already reported accurately on Matt Drudge's great website the night before.
Going there is like visiting an old time railroad museum, complete with 1922 coaches, volunteers pretending to be old time RR conductors, and belching steam engines that pull carloads of kids around a 10-mile track pretending to be a 1930 mainline from New York to Chicago.
And most of us who snatch any free time to stay glued to a TV set for any time or reason usually get it from CNN (Democrats) and Foxnews (Republicans). In both cases, the cable guys do a lot more comprehensive and widespread reporting than Dan/Tom/Peter.
You see, don't you, that it really doesn't matter what these people report any more on their television networks. You people have begun destroying their credibility, and therefore destroying them and their empires of the formerly gullible, by tearing to laughable shreds a story based on a forgery that they stupidly put on prime time.
The result won't be the demise of the careers of Dan Rather and the CBS executives, so much as the demise of prime time itself.
When is your "prime time", Dean? Is it 2AM when you probably get some of your best posting done? Maybe 11:30 in the morning, after changing the diaper of your newborn and playing a little with your number one kid? Think what it means if millions of others also are working on similarly impossible-to-predict schedules.
This in itself is a key reason that the concept of scheduled big broadcasts are dying. Advertisers are some of the most intelligent business executives in this most commercial of all societies. How long with they continue sustaining an expensive communications mechanism whose birth, maturity and approaching death was timed to a 9-5 work cycle, with dinner at 6.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Since what you were doing was clearly not _reporting_, by your own admission.... Doesn't that imply that it was an in-kind donation to the Kerry campaign?
They might just be Amish Luddites, but more often they're elderly or poor/uneducated [that combination, especially]. Of that grouping, the latter doesn't care very much for news, but the former does.
What's interesting about this story is seeing how people [like my 50's-era father] respond to it. For them, they still think of computers as 'those games that used to be in arcades'. He &his friends are very amused by Dan getting busted for lying, but they don't know how exactly it happened.
That's the thing with old chinese apologies — you knew when the guy was serious.
Or maybe Rather could literally fall on his sword for CBS?
That's the problem with today's media — they're so couched in metaphore that they forget that these things meant something real, at some point. One might even argue that it's this utter detachment from reality — perhaps it started with the need to make professional sports sound like ancient mythology, when it's actually a bunch of guys running around playing a game — perhaps it started with something else. But if people use language in a way that isn't very connected with reality, is it terribly surprising if they forget that there's something more real than just what you say?
;-)
All communications media is transitory, especially since the development of the telegraph in the early 19th century. Which means that the way we predominantly learned about public events 50 years ago has rather less functional application in the early 21st century.
I have been a student of communications for a long time. (It was the subject of my bachelor's degree in 1962, and I have learned to think of it as not as a sealed fixture but as a tool that continually evolves.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
When is your birthday? You seem to have been saying that you're 70 for the least 12-18 months. :-)
(note: the above is meant purely as a joke, though I am kind of curious when your birthday is just out of a sort of community spirit.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I surely hope that you didn't think I was generalizing to all elderly, though from your answer, you may have taken it that way. I'm responding based on a small sample of older persons, not all of them.
For that matter, not all 'poor' are computerless. Plenty of them are curious &have access. But then I've run across community programs that purport to teach computing skills for career training that can't get off the ground becoz the whole idea of 'work' is rather distasteful to their clients.
I guess my point is, there's always exceptions to any given assumption, just as there's confirming evidence somewhere else.
Everything about me is more simple than complex, if you choose to look. I am what I say I am. Nothing and never more. Nothing and never less.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
That was me who joked about your age being constant, and was curious about your birthday.
Many people do not know what a blog is as yet. Correct me here if I am wrong. I AM NOT computer saavy as *I want to be as yet. I am *reallly trying* to be with my disabilities in my hands, and strong medicine has made it even harder...PROOF of that is what I just did!
I went ahead and downloaded the new browser, Firefox. Bad mistake, bad for me bad. I lost all things that were in my browser. The browser that came with my laptop, Internet Explorer and now I am so upset because now I lost everybodys e-mails and things I was saving in there until I felt better I am praying with new drug treatment.
Anyway I believe that is what Arnold is referring to. Millions of people surf the net and they do have cable like I do. I had all the cable news and the news anchors on CNN, Fox and MSNBC did not know what a blog was. (It was a financial decision on my part because I do not spend time watching all the stations, it was better for me because I wanted to put the money into high speed instead.) But I did, and I remember several really good anchors on morning shows were looking puzzled when an author or someone would mention blogs...they still are.
I don't think it is age issue. I know a few bloggers personally so of course I tell people I know, and believe it or not, here as well as when I was living in Chicago they said, "A BLOG, WHAT'S A BLOG!" When I go to my classes at a real well known church world wide, many people of all ages don't know what I am talking about. Now in my creative class where we have author's they know what a blog is. A couple of college students in there had no idea. One young man is learning how to design web sites even though he is 100% computer saavy, and he was thrilled when I gave him my favorite blogs.
I think, now I said *think*, Arnold is encouraging people with blogs. Those bloggers that can put more time in will have the news faster. Those that have a daytime job of let's say 9-5 or other shifts come home fix their dinners and head straight to their blogs.
I think Mrs.du Toit is a good example. She devotes as much time as she can to blogging but she has the household to run and has her company set up in her home. Her husband runs a blog as well but he too can not devote as much as he would like because he is a professional author and writer like the Mrs. Blogs can't pay all the bills yet. Dean works at night and during the slow periods he can work and do a fine job and I believe Rosemary is working to get her own business but until then between the two of them they can keep up with the news faster.
From what I know and have seen of Arnold he is right and wants bloggers he cares about like Dean to stay on top and no overdo a story. If I am wrong he will come online and tell me. I have no way to contact anyone and have to wait for my son in law to be to come home from work and try to help me. He helped me yesterday so I could fax some great pictures to Dean.
Woah...that took about an hour folks with just a few fingers, pretty good I guess.
When you qualify your "I'm Sorry" with something like, "BUT We made our unfounded accusations based upon good faith", It is not an apology. Yes, CBS ate crow, but they didn't really apologize.
But, No Pundit Intended.
You were right. I do want bloggers like Dean to stay on top and not overdo any stories. And the larger the number of blogsites, the greater the likelihood that truth will distill out very quickly from all the stuff input to the system.
Congratulations on your new and improved writing style. I think you took the trouble to write shorter and more coherent sentences grouped into logically consistent paragraphs. Which means you can communicate better with your readers. Keep it up.
Here's looking at you, kid.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I meant to tell you I thought the old railroad musuem was fantastic!
My daughter calls, "Mom, these kids nowadays are really hard to raise." She has a fourteen year old precious daughter and they are kinda bucking heads so to speak.
"Well Kristi, you mean the problem you are talking about with Tiffany and how her girlfriend stole her outfit but yet you talked to the young girl and her Mother is something new?"
I surely wanted to chuckle but I dare not folks, she is serious and these times are the roughest. These kids today are so hard to raise.
This age, this new age of technology has them baffled and then they * ass u me* my days, back in the early 1900's, or 1859 have changed the way we raise our children and goodness the *new wave* of high speed technology has changed the world!
Same problems different era. Well Arnold, I think when I was in grade schol back in the days of the new frontier and the cowboy and indians, (I had to play Tonta, female Tonto, I made that up, Tanta. Sometimes because my older brother... dang dang dang him! I wanted to play, "The Lone Ranger!"
You mentioned the telegraph so it just made me think of how those indians got message that the cowboys were a comin.' That must have been tough gathering the wood, rubbing the pieces of wood together. Man, they did not have matches! Once the wood caught fire, those indians used smoked signals to alert the other tribes.
..Oh my, my my, when my big brother started a fire in the back yard so he could show me, *me the younger sister ya know*...the cowboys and him being, THE LONE RANGER and all, you would think he being the cowboy would be pretty smart!
NOT!!! We had pretty green grass and Mom spent days tending to her garden. Oh she loved her garden, there she would go singing that dumb dumb song...Mona Lisa. That song drove me bonkers because I did not understand what the fuss was. She sang it allll the time!
Backyard spread a fire in that pretty green grass and now my smart older brother was running around in circles screaming, "Janelle, get the water hose, get the water hose quick!" The Lone Ranger, my older brother sure made a mess of things! He was just darn lucky I had the sense to run straight to the hose and faucet! We did wipe out a part of Mom's yellow roses, oops! He, he he...guess who got in trouble!?!
Times they is a changin' but somehow they stay the same. We still have 24 hours in a day and there are still 7 days in a week. I think you and me are on the same page Arnold, he he!
Dan: "Did you really get these from Killian's personal files?"
Burkett: "No. Sorry."
Dan: "OK, well, you know, these things happen. Thanks for saying sorry. Guess I'll go apologize too."
Man, we need a bulldog questioner on this - somebody like Mike Wallace, for instance.
Wallace vs. Rather in a no-holds-barred cage match! How sweet would it be for the eye net to go down that way?
PS: my favorite anagram for Dan Rather: "Had Ranter."
To use a "but" in a sentence negates or at the very least downplays what has been said in the first half of the sentence—basic grammar this rule.
I used to like Dan Rather. Damn.