Modified Limited Hangout
The Rather story looks more and more like a partisan dirty trick.
WSJ.com
The big news in yesterday's mea culpa by CBS News isn't that the network was "misled" about "documents whose authenticity is in doubt," as it was finally forced to concede. The story is the admission that the source Dan Rather trusted with CBS's reputation was none other than Bill Burkett, a noted antagonist of President Bush.
Journalists--including us--use all manner of sources, of course, and many of them are partisans of one kind or another. But as much as possible we owe readers an indication of where those sources are coming from. And if those sources turn out to be wrong, as they sometimes are, then our obligation is to own up to the error as soon as possible.
The problem in this case is that before yesterday CBS never gave its viewers even a hint that its entire controversial story hinged on the word of someone who has made it one of his main goals in life to defeat Mr. Bush. Even after the documents on Mr. Bush's National Guard service were called into question, CBS refused to let viewers in on the secret of its source's motives.
This is the real scandal here, and it makes us wonder if Mr. Burkett is the end of this story. It isn't as if Mr. Burkett's motives were hard to discover. On August 25, addressing Mr. Bush in the second person, Mr. Burkett wrote in a Web posting, "I know from your files that we have now reassembled, the fact that you did not fulfill your oath, taken when you were commissioned to 'obey the orders of the officers appointed over you.' "
More intriguing, in an August 21 posting, Mr. Burkett said he had spoken with Max Cleland, the former Georgia Senator and fierce John Kerry advocate, about how to respond to Republican campaign tactics. "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back."
This, believe it or not, is the source Mr. Rather described as "unimpeachable." The kindest interpretation is that the famous anchor and CBS were gullible. But perhaps they will forgive their audience for also now suspecting some partisan bias--especially in light of an interview with Mr. Rather that the trade publication Broadcasting & Cable published August 30.
Asked if the media were paying too much attention to the Swift Boat Veterans' criticisms of John Kerry, Mr. Rather replied: "In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn't do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns." Yet nine days later Mr. Rather was reporting on Mr. Bush's National Guard service as if it were the story of a lifetime.
CBS said yesterday that Mr. Burkett admits giving "a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." Mr. Burkett and CBS have not revealed that source, but we know he had contact with a Kerry surrogate, Mr. Cleland, who expressed a desire to "counterattack."
We also know that Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe was quick to offer his own theory--that Karl Rove had fabricated the documents. And we know that the day after Mr. Rather's report aired, the Democrats unveiled "Operation Fortunate Son," a campaign video about Mr. Bush's National Guard service that incorporated footage from "60 Minutes."
All of this raises the question of whether CBS was a vessel for, if not a willing participant in, a partisan dirty trick two months before a closely contested Presidential election. Last week Mr. Rather told the Washington Post that "if the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story." It was too late for that; Web writers and other news organizations had beaten him to it. But if CBS wants to restore the credibility it enjoyed back in the era of Edward R. Murrow, it will now get to the bottom of the story behind Mr. Rather's discredited story.
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