Seven years after Dan Rather left his position as CBS news producer and anchorman in the wake of “Rathergate,” he’s still insisting that the mainstream media’s liberal bias is a figment of conservatives’ imagination. 😯
As you’ll recall, just two months before the 2004 presidential election, Rather and CBS News suddenly discovered “proof” – in the form of National Guard correspondence – that George W. Bush had signed with the Guard to deliberately avoid service in Vietnam. Within days the documents were found to be forgeries and it soon became clear that Rather & Co. hadn’t bothered to properly verify their authenticity before CBS rushed to air the story.
It was a move for which a rookie reporter would have been sent promptly packing. For a leading network news anchor, it was a blatant case of journalistic malpractice. And one that certainly appeared to be a desperate attempt to sway the ’04 election in favor of John Kerry.
Yet Wednesday, when John Stewart spoke with him on his “Daily Show” on Comedy Central, Rather was still insisting that allegations that the mainstream media reports news from a liberal perspective have been greatly overstated.
From the Daily Caller:
Stewart asked Rather about his experience with liberal bias within these newsrooms. Rather denied that such bias really exists, said that the perception comes from the worldview many journalists get early in their careers…
“But, it has not been my experience,” he continued. “I know what — it’s widely believed that CBS, NBC, ABC — chocked full of liberals. Not true. What it is chock full of is people who wanted to give honest news, straightforward news and voted both ways in many elections.
Well then Dan, how do you explain the election of “mystery man” Barack Hussein Obama? You helped advance a leftist propaganda trend that’s only gotten immeasurably worse in the last decade. The msm totally abdicated their responsibility when it came to vetting “the One.”
Bruce Thornton at FrontPageMag had a great post last week [The Potemkin President Disintegrates] that details just how much we still don’t know about the current occupant of the White House ~
What allowed the “fantasy” Obama to gain the White House was the collusion of a corrupt mainstream media that failed to ask the hard questions or follow through on stories that had managed to get the nation’s attention…
• The continuing questions about Obama’s birth-country
• Obama’s radical past – starting his political career in the living room of ex-terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn
• 20 years of Reverend Jeremiah “God-damn America” Wright
• Obama’s college transcripts and complete medical records
…The same media that ran with a hit-piece on George Bush supported only by an obviously fabricated letter, and that currently is intensely picking over the past history of Bain Capital, Romney’s treatment of the family dog, and his alleged high-school bullying––that same media four years ago didn’t think there was anything newsworthy in the Democratic candidate for president having ties with an unrepentant left-wing terrorist. Instead, they helped construct Obama’s new identity as a pragmatic centrist beyond partisan politics.
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Ole Danny Boy has been singing his same off-key tune for years:
“Now respectfully, when you start talking about a liberal agenda and all the, quote, ‘liberal bias’ in the media, I quite frankly, and I say this respectfully but candidly to you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
~ Dan Rather to talk radio host Mike Rosen of KOA Denver, November 28, 1995 ~
Listen up Rather: You’re retired now. It’s time to take up a hobby, hit the links, putter in the garden, maybe do a little volunteering…
But please, don’t try to fool us anymore with the myth that the mainstream media is in actually in the business of objective news reporting. We “sheeple” aren’t nearly as gullible as we used to be.
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Related:
• The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples @ The Western Center for Journalism. Must-read for anyone who’s still buying Rather’s “no bias” B.S.
• A bunch of detailed info on “Rathergate” from Bernie Goldberg here and here.
